FPGA Implementation of the “PYRAMIDS“ Block Cipher

The “PYRAMIDS" Block Cipher is a symmetric encryption algorithm of a 64, 128, 256-bit length, that accepts a variable key length of 128, 192, 256 bits. The algorithm is an iterated cipher consisting of repeated applications of a simple round transformation with different operations and different sequence in each round. The algorithm was previously software implemented in Cµ code. In this paper, a hardware implementation of the algorithm, using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), is presented. In this work, we discuss the algorithm, the implemented micro-architecture, and the simulation and implementation results. Moreover, we present a detailed comparison with other implemented standard algorithms. In addition, we include the floor plan as well as the circuit diagrams of the various micro-architecture modules.

A New Approach of Fuzzy Methods for Evaluating of Hydrological Data

The main criteria of designing in the most hydraulic constructions essentially are based on runoff or discharge of water. Two of those important criteria are runoff and return period. Mostly, these measures are calculated or estimated by stochastic data. Another feature in hydrological data is their impreciseness. Therefore, in order to deal with uncertainty and impreciseness, based on Buckley-s estimation method, a new fuzzy method of evaluating hydrological measures are developed. The method introduces triangular shape fuzzy numbers for different measures in which both of the uncertainty and impreciseness concepts are considered. Besides, since another important consideration in most of the hydrological studies is comparison of a measure during different months or years, a new fuzzy method which is consistent with special form of proposed fuzzy numbers, is also developed. Finally, to illustrate the methods more explicitly, the two algorithms are tested on one simple example and a real case study.

Evolution of the Hydrogen Atom: An Alternative to the Big Bang Theory

Elementary particles are created in pairs of equal and opposite momentums at a reference frame at the speed of light. The speed of light reference frame is viewed as a point in space as observed by observer at rest. This point in space is the bang location of the big bang theory. The bang in the big bang theory is not more than sustained flow of pairs of positive and negative elementary particles. Electrons and negative charged elementary particles are ejected from this point in space at velocities faster than light, while protons and positively charged particles obtain velocities lower than light. Subsonic masses are found to have real and positive charge, while supersonic masses are found to be negative and imaginary indicating that the two masses are of different entities. The electron-s super-sonic speed, as viewed by rest observer was calculated and found to be less than the speed of light and is little higher than the electron speed in Bohr-s orbit. The newly formed hydrogen gas temperature was found to be in agreement with temperatures found on newly formed stars. Universe expansion was found to be in agreement. Partial mass and charge elementary particles and particles with momentum only were explained in the context of this theoretical approach.

Liveability of Kuala Lumpur City Centre: An Evaluation of the Happiness Level of the Streets- Activities

Liveable city is referred to as the quality of life in an area that contributes towards a safe, healthy and enjoyable place. This paper discusses the role of the streets- activities in making Kuala Lumpur a liveable city and the happiness level of the residents towards the city-s street activities. The study was conducted using the residents of Kuala Lumpur. A mixed method technique is used with the quantitative data as a main data and supported by the qualitative data. Data were collected using questionnaires, observation and also an interview session with a sample of residents of Kuala Lumpur. The sampling technique is based on multistage cluster data sampling. The findings revealed that, there is still no significant relationship between the length of stay of the resident in Kuala Lumpur with the happiness level towards the street activities that occurred in the city.

Contact Stress Analysis of Spur Gear Teeth Pair

Contact stress analysis between two spur gear teeth was considered in different contact positions, representing a pair of mating gears during rotation. A programme has been developed to plot a pair of teeth in contact. This programme was run for each 3° of pinion rotation from the first location of contact to the last location of contact to produce 10 cases. Each case was represented a sequence position of contact between these two teeth. The programme gives graphic results for the profiles of these teeth in each position and location of contact during rotation. Finite element models were made for these cases and stress analysis was done. The results were presented and finite element analysis results were compared with theoretical calculations, wherever available.

Modeling Peer-to-Peer Networks with Interest-Based Clusters

In the world of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networking different protocols have been developed to make the resource sharing or information retrieval more efficient. The SemPeer protocol is a new layer on Gnutella that transforms the connections of the nodes based on semantic information to make information retrieval more efficient. However, this transformation causes high clustering in the network that decreases the number of nodes reached, therefore the probability of finding a document is also decreased. In this paper we describe a mathematical model for the Gnutella and SemPeer protocols that captures clustering-related issues, followed by a proposition to modify the SemPeer protocol to achieve moderate clustering. This modification is a sort of link management for the individual nodes that allows the SemPeer protocol to be more efficient, because the probability of a successful query in the P2P network is reasonably increased. For the validation of the models, we evaluated a series of simulations that supported our results.

Traditionally Sustainability Analyses of Hydraulic-Architectural Bridge Construction in Iran

Bridge is an architectural symbol in Iran as Badgir (wind catcher); fire temples and arch are vaults are such. Therefore, from the very old ages, construction of bridges in Iran has mixed with architecture, social customs, alms and charity and holiness. Since long ago, from Mad, Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid times which construction of bridges got an inseparable relation with social dependency and architecture, based on those dependency bridges and dams got holy names; as Dokhtar castle and Dokhtar bridges were constructed. This method continued even after Islam and whenever Iranians got free from political fights and the immunity of roads were established the bridge construction did also prospered. In ancient times bridge construction passes through it growing and completion process and in Sassanid time in some way it reached to the peak of art and glory; as after Islam especially during 4th. century (Arab calendar) it put behind a period of glory and in Safavid time it reached to an exceptional glory and magnificence by constructing glorious bridges on Zayandeh Roud River in Isfahan. Having a combined style and changeability into bridge barrier, some of these bridges develop into magnificent constructions. The sustainable structures, mentioned above, are constructed for various reasons as follows: connecting two sides of a river, storing water, controlling floods, using water energy to operate water windmills, making lanes of streams for farms- use, and building recreational places for people, etc. These studies carried in bridges reveals the fact that in construction and designing mentioned above, lots of technological factors have been taken into consideration such as exceeding floods in the rives, hydraulic and hydrology of the rivers and bridges, geology, foundation, structure, construction material, and adopting appropriate executing methods, all of which are being analyzed in this article.

An Efficient Energy Adaptive Hybrid Error Correction Technique for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Variable channel conditions in underwater networks, and variable distances between sensors due to water current, leads to variable bit error rate (BER). This variability in BER has great effects on energy efficiency of error correction techniques used. In this paper an efficient energy adaptive hybrid error correction technique (AHECT) is proposed. AHECT adaptively changes error technique from pure retransmission (ARQ) in a low BER case to a hybrid technique with variable encoding rates (ARQ & FEC) in a high BER cases. An adaptation algorithm depends on a precalculated packet acceptance rate (PAR) look-up table, current BER, packet size and error correction technique used is proposed. Based on this adaptation algorithm a periodically 3-bit feedback is added to the acknowledgment packet to state which error correction technique is suitable for the current channel conditions and distance. Comparative studies were done between this technique and other techniques, and the results show that AHECT is more energy efficient and has high probability of success than all those techniques.

Metaheuristic Algorithms for Decoding Binary Linear Codes

This paper introduces two decoders for binary linear codes based on Metaheuristics. The first one uses a genetic algorithm and the second is based on a combination genetic algorithm with a feed forward neural network. The decoder based on the genetic algorithms (DAG) applied to BCH and convolutional codes give good performances compared to Chase-2 and Viterbi algorithm respectively and reach the performances of the OSD-3 for some Residue Quadratic (RQ) codes. This algorithm is less complex for linear block codes of large block length; furthermore their performances can be improved by tuning the decoder-s parameters, in particular the number of individuals by population and the number of generations. In the second algorithm, the search space, in contrast to DAG which was limited to the code word space, now covers the whole binary vector space. It tries to elude a great number of coding operations by using a neural network. This reduces greatly the complexity of the decoder while maintaining comparable performances.

An Agent Oriented Architecture to Supply Dynamic Document Generation in ERP Systems

One of the most important aspects expected from an ERP system is to mange user\administrator manual documents dynamically. Since an ERP package is frequently changed during its implementation in customer sites, it is often needed to add new documents and/or apply required changes to existing documents in order to cover new or changed capabilities. The worse is that since these changes occur continuously, the corresponding documents should be updated dynamically; otherwise, implementing the ERP package in the organization encounters serious risks. In this paper, we propose a new architecture which is based on the agent oriented vision and supplies the dynamic document generation expected from ERP systems using several independent but cooperative agents. Beside the dynamic document generation which is the main issue of this paper, the presented architecture will address some aspects of intelligence and learning capabilities existing in ERP.

Evaluation of Stent Performances using FEA considering a Realistic Balloon Expansion

A number of previous studies were rarely considered the effects of transient non-uniform balloon expansion on evaluation of the properties and behaviors of stents during stent expansion, nor did they determine parameters to maximize the performances driven by mechanical characteristics. Therefore, in order to fully understand the mechanical characteristics and behaviors of stent, it is necessary to consider a realistic modeling of transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion. The aim of the study is to propose design parameters capable of improving the ability of vascular stent through a comparative study of seven commercial stents using finite element analyses of a realistic transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion process. In this study, seven representative commercialized stents were evaluated by finite element (FE) analysis in terms of the criteria based on the itemized list of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Standards (prEN). The results indicate that using stents composed of opened unit cells connected by bend-shaped link structures and controlling the geometrical and morphological features of the unit cell strut or the link structure at the distal ends of stent may improve mechanical characteristics of stent. This study provides a better method at the realistic transient non-uniform balloon-stent expansion by investigating the characteristics, behaviors, and parameters capable of improving the ability of vascular stent.

Self Watermarking based on Visual Cryptography

We are proposing a simple watermarking method based on visual cryptography. The method is based on selection of specific pixels from the original image instead of random selection of pixels as per Hwang [1] paper. Verification information is generated which will be used to verify the ownership of the image without the need to embed the watermark pattern into the original digital data. Experimental results show the proposed method can recover the watermark pattern from the marked data even if some changes are made to the original digital data.

Spatio-Temporal Video Slice Edges Analysis for Shot Transition Detection and Classification

In this work we will present a new approach for shot transition auto-detection. Our approach is based on the analysis of Spatio-Temporal Video Slice (STVS) edges extracted from videos. The proposed approach is capable to efficiently detect both abrupt shot transitions 'cuts' and gradual ones such as fade-in, fade-out and dissolve. Compared to other techniques, our method is distinguished by its high level of precision and speed. Those performances are obtained due to minimizing the problem of the boundary shot detection to a simple 2D image partitioning problem.

Modeling of Single-Particle Impact in Abrasive Water Jet Machining

This work presents a study on the abrasive water jet (AWJ) machining. An explicit finite element analysis (FEA) of single abrasive particle impact on stainless steel 1.4304 (AISI 304) is conducted. The abrasive water jet machining is modeled by FEA software ABAQUS/CAE. Shapes of craters in FEM simulation results were used and compared with the previous experimental and FEM works by means of crater sphericity. The influence of impact angle and particle velocity was observed. Adaptive mesh domain is used to model the impact zone. Results are in good agreement with those obtained from the experimental and FEM simulation. The crater-s depth is also obtained for different impact angle and abrasive particle velocities.

Evaluation of the Possible Effect of Gender, Age and Duration of Diabetes on the Serum Zinc Levels of Diabetic Patients in Murzuk Area-Libya

The aim of this study was to demonstrate the possible effect of some variables such as age, gender, blood sugar level, and duration of diabetes on the serum level of zinc in diabetic individuals from Murzuk area. Serum zinc (Zn), Fasting blood sugar (FBS), hemoglobin HbA1c (HbA1c) were evaluated in 46 type I diabetic subjects (group 1), 48 type II diabetic subjects (group 2) and 43 healthy individuals (control) of both genders aged (30-81) years. Data showed that both diabetic groups have significantly higher (P0.05) differences in serum Zn levels were observed between Males and Females. Serum Zn levels were non-significantly decreased with increasing age. In type II diabetic subjects, serum Zn levels were non-significantly decreased with increasing duration of disease whereas those in type I were non-significantly increased.

Next Generation IP Address Transition Mechanism for Web Application System

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address is decreasing and a rapid transition method to the next generation IP address (IPv6) should be established. This study aims to evaluate and select the best performance of the IPv6 address network transitionmechanisms, such as IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, transport Relay Translation (TRT) and Reverse Proxy with additional features. It is also aim to prove that faster access can be done while ensuring optimal usage of available resources used during the test and actual implementation. This study used two test methods such asInternet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)ping and ApacheBenchmark (AB) methodsto evaluate the performance.Performance metrics for this study include aspects ofaverageaccessin one second,time takenfor singleaccess,thedata transfer speed and the costof additional requirements.Reverse Proxy with Caching featureis the most efficientmechanism because of it simpler configurationandthe best performerfrom the test conducted.

Electron Filling Factor and Sunlight Concentration Effects on the Efficiency of Intermediate Band Solar Cell

For a determined intermediate band position, the effects of electron filling factor and sunlight concentration on the active region thickness and efficiency of the quantum-dot intermediate band solar cell are calculated. For each value of electron filling factor, the maximum point of efficiency obtained and resulted in the optimum thickness of the cell under three different sunlight concentrations. We show the importance of filling factor as a parameter to be more considered. The photon recycling effect eliminated in all calculations.

Some Properties of Superfuzzy Subset of a Fuzzy Subset

In this paper, we define permutable and mutually permutable fuzzy subgroups of a group. Then we study their relation with permutable and mutually permutable subgroups of a group. Also we study some properties of fuzzy quasinormal subgroup. We define superfuzzy subset of a fuzzy subset and we study some properties of superfuzzy subset of a fuzzy subset.

Enhanced Conference Organization Based On Correlation of Web Information and Ontology Based Expertise Search

From the importance of the conference and its constructive role in the studies discussion, there must be a strong organization that allows the exploitation of the discussions in opening new horizons. The vast amount of information scattered across the web, make it difficult to find experts, who can play a prominent role in organizing conferences. In this paper we proposed a new approach of extracting researchers- information from various Web resources and correlating them in order to confirm their correctness. As a validator of this approach, we propose a service that will be useful to set up a conference. Its main objective is to find appropriate experts, as well as the social events for a conference. For this application we us Semantic Web technologies like RDF and ontology to represent the confirmed information, which are linked to another ontology (skills ontology) that are used to present and compute the expertise.

The Homotopy Analysis Method for Solving Discontinued Problems Arising in Nanotechnology

This paper applies the homotopy analysis method method to a nonlinear differential-difference equation arising in nanotechnology. Continuum hypothesis on nanoscales is invalid, and a differential-difference model is considered as an alternative approach to describing discontinued problems. Comparison of the approximate solution with the exact one reveals that the method is very effective.