An Assessment of Groundwater Crisis in Iran Case Study: Fars Province

Groundwater is one of the most important water resources in Fars province. Based on this study, 95 percent of the total annual water consumption in Fars is used for agriculture, whereas the percentages for domestic and industrial uses are 4 and 1 percent, respectively. Population growth, urban and industrial growth, and agricultural development in Fars have created a condition of water stress. In this province, farmers and other users are pumping groundwater faster than its natural replenishment rate, causing a continuous drop in groundwater tables and depletion of this resource. In this research variation of groundwater level , their effects and ways to help control groundwater levels in some plains of Fars were evaluated .Excessive exploitation of groundwater in Darab, Jahrom, Estahban, Arsanjan, Khir and Niriz plains of Fars caused the groundwater levels fall too fast or to unacceptable levels. The average drawdown of the water table in Arsanjan, Khir. Estahban and Niriz plain plains were 12,8, 9 and 6 meters during 16,11,11 and 13 years ago respectively. This not only reduces available water resources and well yields but also can saline water intrusion, reductions in river flow and in wetland areas , drying springs, and ground subsidence, considerable increase in pumping costs and a significant decline in crop yields as a result of the increasing salinity. Finally based on situation and condition of the aquifer some suggestions are recommended.

Heart Rate Variability in Responders and Non- Responders to Live-Moderate, Train-Low Altitude Training

The aim of this study was to compare the effects of an altitude training camp on heart rate variability and performance in elite triathletes. Ten athletes completed 20 days of live-high, train-low training at 1650m. Athletes underwent pre and post 800-m swim time trials at sea-level, and two heart rate variability tests at 1650m on the first and last day of the training camp. Based on their time trial results, athletes were divided into responders and non-responders. Relative to the non-responders, the responders sympathetic-toparasympathetic ratio decreased substantially after 20 days of altitude training (-0.68 ± 1.08 and -1.2 ± 0.96, mean ± 90% confidence interval for supine and standing respectively). In addition, sympathetic activity while standing was also substantially lower post-altitude in the responders compared to the non-responders (-1869 ± 4764 ms2). Results indicate that responders demonstrated a change to more vagal predominance compared to non-responders.

A Comparative Study on the Financial Characteristics for Development Methods of Urban Development Project - Focusing on Multi-level Replotting Method -

The purpose of this study is comparing and analysing of the financial characteristics for development methods of the urban development project in the established area, focusing on the multi-level replotting. Analysis showed that the type of the lowest expenditure was 'combination type of group-land and multi-level replotting' and the type of the highest profitability was 'multi-level replotting type'. But 'multi-level replotting type' has still risk of amount of cost for the additional architecture. In addition, we subdivided standard amount for liquidation of replotting and analysed income-expenditure flow. Analysis showed that both of 'multi-level replotting type' and 'combination type of group-land and multi-level replotting' improved profitability of project and property change ratio. However, when the standard was under a certain amount, amount of original property for the replotting was increased exponentially, and profitability of project.

Nitrogen and Phosphorus Removal from Livestock Wastewater by Zeolite Ion Exchange and Ionizing Radiation

The ionizing radiation of livestock wastewater for the removal of nitrogen and phosphorus was studied in the presence of a natural zeolite. The feasibility of a combined process of zeolite ion exchange and electron beam irradiation of livestock wastewater was also investigated. The removal efficiencies of NH4 +-N, T-N and T-P were significantly enhanced by electron beam irradiation after zeolite ion exchange as a pre-treatment. The presence of silica zeolite accelerated the decomposition rate of livestock wastewater in the electron beam irradiation process. These results indicate that the combined process of zeolite ion exchange and electron beam irradiation has the potential for the treatment of livestock wastewater

Pressure Induced Isenthalpic Oscillations with Condensation and Evaporation in Saturated Two-Phase Fluids

Saturated two-phase fluid flows are often subject to pressure induced oscillations. Due to compressibility the vapor bubbles act as a spring with an asymmetric non-linear characteristic. The volume of the vapor bubbles increases or decreases differently if the pressure fluctuations are compressing or expanding; consequently, compressing pressure fluctuations in a two-phase pipe flow cause less displacement in the direction of the pipe flow than expanding pressure fluctuations. The displacement depends on the ratio of liquid to vapor, the ratio of pressure fluctuations over average pressure and on the exciting frequency of the pressure fluctuations. In addition, pressure fluctuations in saturated vapor bubbles cause condensation and evaporation within the bubbles and change periodically the ratio between liquid to vapor, and influence the dynamical parameters for the oscillation. The oscillations are conforming to an isenthalpic process at constant enthalpy with no heat transfer and no exchange of work. The paper describes the governing non-linear equation for twophase fluid oscillations with condensation and evaporation, and presents steady state approximate solutions for free and for pressure induced oscillations. Resonance criteria and stability are discussed.

Development of a Project Selection Method on Information System Using ANP and Fuzzy Logic

Project selection problems on management information system (MIS) are often considered a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) for a solving method. These problems contain two aspects, such as interdependencies among criteria and candidate projects and qualitative and quantitative factors of projects. However, most existing methods reported in literature consider these aspects separately even though these two aspects are simultaneously incorporated. For this reason, we proposed a hybrid method using analytic network process (ANP) and fuzzy logic in order to represent both aspects. We then propose a goal programming model to conduct an optimization for the project selection problems interpreted by a hybrid concept. Finally, a numerical example is conducted as verification purposes.

Flow Characteristics Impeller Change of an Axial Turbo Fan

In this paper, three dimensional flow characteristic was presented by a revision of an impeller of an axial turbo fan for improving the airflow rate and the static pressure. TO consider an incompressible steady three-dimensional flow, the RANS equations are used as the governing equations, and the standard k-ε turbulence model is chosen. The pitch angles of 44°, 54°, 59°, and 64° are implemented for the numerical model. The numerical results show that airflow rates of each pitch angle are 1,175 CMH, 1,270 CMH, 1,340 CMH, and 800 CMH, respectively. The difference of the static pressure at impeller inlet and outlet are 120 Pa, 214 Pa, 242 Pa, and 60 Pa according to respective pitch angles. It means that the 59° of the impeller pitch angle is optimal to improve the airflow rate and the static pressure.

Conceptual Design of an Aircraft with Maglev Landing System

The accelerated growth in aircraft industries desire effectual schemes, programs, innovative designs of advanced systems to accomplishing the augmenting need for home-free air transportation. In this paper, a contemporary conceptual design of an airplane has been proposed without landing gear systems in order to reducing accidents, time consumption, and to eliminating drawbacks by using superconducting levitation phenomenon. This invention of an airplane with superconductive material coating, on the solar plexus region assist to reduce weight by approximately 4% of the total takeoff weight, and cost effective. Moreover, we conjectured that superconductor landing system reduces ground friction, mission fuel, total drag, take-off and landing distance.

Combine a Population-based Incremental Learning with Artificial Immune System for Intrusion Detection System

This research focus on the intrusion detection system (IDS) development which using artificial immune system (AIS) with population based incremental learning (PBIL). AIS have powerful distinguished capability to extirpate antigen when the antigen intrude into human body. The PBIL is based on past learning experience to adjust new learning. Therefore we propose an intrusion detection system call PBIL-AIS which combine two approaches of PBIL and AIS to evolution computing. In AIS part we design three mechanisms such as clonal selection, negative selection and antibody level to intensify AIS performance. In experimental result, our PBIL-AIS IDS can capture high accuracy when an intrusion connection attacks.

Improving University Operations with Data Mining: Predicting Student Performance

The purpose of this paper is to develop models that would enable predicting student success. These models could improve allocation of students among colleges and optimize the newly introduced model of government subsidies for higher education. For the purpose of collecting data, an anonymous survey was carried out in the last year of undergraduate degree student population using random sampling method. Decision trees were created of which two have been chosen that were most successful in predicting student success based on two criteria: Grade Point Average (GPA) and time that a student needs to finish the undergraduate program (time-to-degree). Decision trees have been shown as a good method of classification student success and they could be even more improved by increasing survey sample and developing specialized decision trees for each type of college. These types of methods have a big potential for use in decision support systems.

Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Framework for Supporting Biofuels Policy Making

In this paper, a fuzzy algorithm and a fuzzy multicriteria decision framework are developed and used for a practical question of optimizing biofuels policy making. The methodological framework shows how to incorporate fuzzy set theory in a decision process of finding a sustainable biofuels policy among several policy options. Fuzzy set theory is used here as a tool to deal with uncertainties of decision environment, vagueness and ambiguities of policy objectives, subjectivities of human assessments and imprecise and incomplete information about the evaluated policy instruments.

Preparation and Investigation of Photocatalytic Properties of ZnO Nanocrystals: Effect of Operational Parameters and Kinetic Study

ZnO nanocrystals with mean diameter size 14 nm have been prepared by precipitation method, and examined as photocatalyst for the UV-induced degradation of insecticide diazinon as deputy of organic pollutant in aqueous solution. The effects of various parameters, such as illumination time, the amount of photocatalyst, initial pH values and initial concentration of insecticide on the photocatalytic degradation diazinon were investigated to find desired conditions. In this case, the desired parameters were also tested for the treatment of real water containing the insecticide. Photodegradation efficiency of diazinon was compared between commercial and prepared ZnO nanocrystals. The results indicated that UV/ZnO process applying prepared nanocrystalline ZnO offered electrical energy efficiency and quantum yield better than commercial ZnO. The present study, on the base of Langmuir-Hinshelwood mechanism, illustrated a pseudo first-order kinetic model with rate constant of surface reaction equal to 0.209 mg l-1 min-1 and adsorption equilibrium constant of 0.124 l mg-1.

Scatterer Density in Edge and Coherence Enhancing Nonlinear Anisotropic Diffusion for Medical Ultrasound Speckle Reduction

This paper proposes new enhancement models to the methods of nonlinear anisotropic diffusion to greatly reduce speckle and preserve image features in medical ultrasound images. By incorporating local physical characteristics of the image, in this case scatterer density, in addition to the gradient, into existing tensorbased image diffusion methods, we were able to greatly improve the performance of the existing filtering methods, namely edge enhancing (EE) and coherence enhancing (CE) diffusion. The new enhancement methods were tested using various ultrasound images, including phantom and some clinical images, to determine the amount of speckle reduction, edge, and coherence enhancements. Scatterer density weighted nonlinear anisotropic diffusion (SDWNAD) for ultrasound images consistently outperformed its traditional tensor-based counterparts that use gradient only to weight the diffusivity function. SDWNAD is shown to greatly reduce speckle noise while preserving image features as edges, orientation coherence, and scatterer density. SDWNAD superior performances over nonlinear coherent diffusion (NCD), speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD), adaptive weighted median filter (AWMF), wavelet shrinkage (WS), and wavelet shrinkage with contrast enhancement (WSCE), make these methods ideal preprocessing steps for automatic segmentation in ultrasound imaging.

Differential Protection for Power Transformer Using Wavelet Transform and PNN

A new approach for protection of power transformer is presented using a time-frequency transform known as Wavelet transform. Different operating conditions such as inrush, Normal, load, External fault and internal fault current are sampled and processed to obtain wavelet coefficients. Different Operating conditions provide variation in wavelet coefficients. Features like energy and Standard deviation are calculated using Parsevals theorem. These features are used as inputs to PNN (Probabilistic neural network) for fault classification. The proposed algorithm provides more accurate results even in the presence of noise inputs and accurately identifies inrush and fault currents. Overall classification accuracy of the proposed method is found to be 96.45%. Simulation of the fault (with and without noise) was done using MATLAB AND SIMULINK software taking 2 cycles of data window (40 m sec) containing 800 samples. The algorithm was evaluated by using 10 % Gaussian white noise.

Construction Of Decentralized Lifetime Maximizing Tree for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

To meet the demands of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where data are usually aggregated at a single source prior to transmitting to any distant user, there is a need to establish a tree structure inside any given event region. In this paper , a novel technique to create one such tree is proposed .This tree preserves the energy and maximizes the lifetime of event sources while they are constantly transmitting for data aggregation. The term Decentralized Lifetime Maximizing Tree (DLMT) is used to denote this tree. DLMT features in nodes with higher energy tend to be chosen as data aggregating parents so that the time to detect the first broken tree link can be extended and less energy is involved in tree maintenance. By constructing the tree in such a way, the protocol is able to reduce the frequency of tree reconstruction, minimize the amount of data loss ,minimize the delay during data collection and preserves the energy.

Telemedicine and Medical Informatics: The Global Approach

Telemedicine is brought to life by contemporary changes of our world and summarizes the entire range of services that are at the crossroad of traditional healthcare and information technology. It is believed that eHealth can help in solving critical issues of rising costs, care for ageing and housebound population, staff shortage. It is a feasible tool to provide routine as well as specialized health service as it has the potential to improve both the access to and the standard of care. eHealth is no more an optional choice. It has already made quite a way but it still remains a fantastic challenge for the future requiring cooperation and coordination at all possible levels. The strategic objectives of this paper are: 1. To start with an attempt to clarify the mass of terms used nowadays; 2. To answer the question “Who needs eHealth"; 3. To focus on the necessity of bridging telemedicine and medical (health) informatics as well as on the dual relationship between them; as well as 4. To underline the need of networking in understanding, developing and implementing eHealth.

Craniometric Analysis of Foramen Magnum for Estimation of Sex

Human skull is shown to exhibit numerous sexually dimorphic traits. Estimation of sex is a challenging task especially when a part of skull is brought for medicolegal investigation. The present research was planned to evaluate the sexing potential of the dimensions of foramen magnum in forensic identification by craniometric analysis. Length and breadth of the foramen magnum was measured using Vernier calipers and the area of foramen magnum was calculated. The length, breadth, and area of foramen magnum were found to be larger in males than females. Sexual dimorphism index was calculated to estimate the sexing potential of each variable. The study observations are suggestive of the limited utility of the craniometric analysis of foramen magnum during the examination of skull and its parts in estimation of sex.

Futures Trading: Design of a Strategy

The paper describes the futures trading and aims to design the speculators trading strategy. The problem is formulated as the decision making task and such as is solved. The solution of the task leads to complex mathematical problems and the approximations of the decision making is demanded. Two kind of approximation are used in the paper: Monte Carlo for the multi-step prediction and iteration spread in time for the optimization. The solution is applied to the real-market data and the results of the off-line experiments are presented.

Estimation Method for the Construction of Hydrogen Society with Various Biomass Resources in Japan-Project of Cost Reductions in Biomass Transport and Feasibility for Hydrogen Station with Biomass-

It was determined that woody biomass and livestock excreta can be utilized as hydrogen resources and hydrogen produced from such sources can be used to fill fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at hydrogen stations. It was shown that the biomass transport costs for hydrogen production may be reduced the costs for co-generation. In the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, there are only a few sites capable of producing hydrogen from woody biomass in amounts greater than 200 m3/h-the scale required for a hydrogen station to be operationally practical. However, in the case of livestock excreta, it was shown that 15% of the municipalities in this area are capable of securing sufficient biomass to be operationally practical for hydrogen production. The differences in feasibility of practical operation depend on the type of biomass.

Influence of Compactive Efforts on Cement- Bagasse Ash Treatment of Expansive Black Cotton Soil

A laboratory study on the influence of compactive effort on expansive black cotton specimens treated with up to 8% ordinary Portland cement (OPC) admixed with up to 8% bagasse ash (BA) by dry weight of soil and compacted using the energies of the standard Proctor (SP), West African Standard (WAS) or “intermediate” and modified Proctor (MP) were undertaken. The expansive black cotton soil was classified as A-7-6 (16) or CL using the American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Unified Soil Classification System (USCS), respectively. The 7day unconfined compressive strength (UCS) values of the natural soil for SP, WAS and MP compactive efforts are 286, 401 and 515kN/m2 respectively, while peak values of 1019, 1328 and 1420kN/m2 recorded at 8% OPC/ 6% BA, 8% OPC/ 2% BA and 6% OPC/ 4% BA treatments, respectively were less than the UCS value of 1710kN/m2 conventionally used as criterion for adequate cement stabilization. The soaked California bearing ratio (CBR) values of the OPC/BA stabilized soil increased with higher energy level from 2, 4 and 10% for the natural soil to Peak values of 55, 18 and 8% were recorded at 8% OPC/4% BA 8% OPC/2% BA and 8% OPC/4% BA, treatments when SP, WAS and MP compactive effort were used, respectively. The durability of specimens was determined by immersion in water. Soils treatment at 8% OPC/ 4% BA blend gave a value of 50% resistance to loss in strength value which is acceptable because of the harsh test condition of 7 days soaking period specimens were subjected instead of the 4 days soaking period that specified a minimum resistance to loss in strength of 80%. Finally An optimal blend of is 8% OPC/ 4% BA is recommended for treatment of expansive black cotton soil for use as a sub-base material.