Abstract: Fine-grained data replication over the Internet allows duplication of frequently accessed data objects, as opposed to entire sites, to certain locations so as to improve the performance of largescale content distribution systems. In a distributed system, agents representing their sites try to maximize their own benefit since they are driven by different goals such as to minimize their communication costs, latency, etc. In this paper, we will use game theoretical techniques and in particular auctions to identify a bidding mechanism that encapsulates the selfishness of the agents, while having a controlling hand over them. In essence, the proposed game theory based mechanism is the study of what happens when independent agents act selfishly and how to control them to maximize the overall performance. A bidding mechanism asks how one can design systems so that agents- selfish behavior results in the desired system-wide goals. Experimental results reveal that this mechanism provides excellent solution quality, while maintaining fast execution time. The comparisons are recorded against some well known techniques such as greedy, branch and bound, game theoretical auctions and genetic algorithms.
Abstract: The protection of groundwater resources is the great
important many semiarid and arid environments. Baghan watershed
is located in the north of Kangan in the Boshehr province in Iran. The
groundwater resources have a vital role in supplying agricultural,
drinking, domestic and industrial water demand in Baghan
watershed. For our investigation into the water quality we collected
30 samples to chemical and physical analysis. The result showed the
marl and evaporation deposits that contain anhydrite and gypsum is
the main source of groundwater pollution, and one part of the
groundwater was polluted by oil and gas industrial. Another part of
the groundwater was contaminated by urban waste water. The
electrical conductivity and captions and anions increased around of
towns and gas refinery. Although the negative impact of untreated
domestic wastewater is relatively low but the results showed strongly
the negative impact of wastewater refinery is very considerable. This
negative impact increased in downstream due to shallow aquifer.
Additionally, the agents that adversely affect the quality of
groundwater come from a variety of sources, including geology,
domestic wastewater and the Jam refinery in Baghan watershed.
Abstract: Higher education has an important role to play in
advocating environmentalism. Given this responsibility, the goal of
higher education should therefore be to develop graduates with the
knowledge, skills and values related to environmentalism. However,
research indicates that there is a lack of consciousness amongst
graduates on the need to be more environmentally aware, especially
when it comes to applying the appropriate knowledge and skills
related to environmentalism. Although institutions of higher learning
do include environmental parameters within their undergraduate and
postgraduate academic programme structures, the environmental
boundaries are usually confined to specific engineering majors within
an engineering programme. This makes environmental knowledge,
skills and values exclusive to certain quarters of the higher education
system. The incorporation of environmental literacy within higher
education institutions as a whole is of utmost pertinence if a nation-s
human capital is to be nurtured to become change agents for the
preservation of environment. This paper discusses approaches that
can be adapted by institutions of higher learning to include
environmental literacy within the graduate-s higher learning
experience.
Abstract: Urban planning, in particular on protected landscape
areas, demands an increasing role of public participation within the
frame of the efficiency of sustainable planning process. The
development of urban planning actions in Protected Landscape areas,
as Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, should perform a methodological
process that is structured over distinct sequential stages, providing
the development of a continuous, interactive, integrated and
participative planning. From the start of Malveira da Serra and Janes
Plan process, several public participation actions were promoted, in
order to involve the local agents, stakeholders and the population in
the decision of specific local key issues and define the appropriate
priorities within the goals and strategies previously settled. As a
result, public participation encouraged an innovative process that
guarantees the efficiency of sustainable urban planning and promotes
a sustainable new way of living in community.
Abstract: Most of researches for conventional simulations were
studied focusing on flocks with a single species. While there exist the
flocking behaviors with a single species in nature, the flocking
behaviors are frequently observed with multi-species. This paper
studies on the flocking simulation for heterogeneous agents. In order
to simulate the flocks for heterogeneous agents, the conventional
method uses the identifier of flock, while the proposed method defines
the feature vector of agent and uses the similarity between agents by
comparing with those feature vectors. Based on the similarity, the
paper proposed the attractive force and repulsive force and then
executed the simulation by applying two forces. The results of
simulation showed that flock formation with heterogeneous agents is
very natural in both cases. In addition, it showed that unlike the
existing method, the proposed method can not only control the density
of the flocks, but also be possible for two different groups of agents to
flock close to each other if they have a high similarity.
Abstract: ZnO nanostructure were synthesized via microwave
method using zinc acetate as starting material, guanidinium as
structure directing agents, and water as solvent.. This work
investigates the photodegradation of azo dyes using the ZnO Flowerlike
in aqueous solutions. As synthesized ZnO samples were
characterized using X-Ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning
electron microscopy (SEM), and FTIR spectroscopy.In this work
photodecolorization of congored azo dye under UV irradiation by
nano ZnO was studied.
Abstract: Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the SARS coronavirus. The treatment of coronavirus-associated SARS has been evolving and so far there is no consensus on an optimal regimen. The mainstream therapeutic interventions for SARS involve broad-spectrum antibiotics and supportive care, as well as antiviral agents and immunomodulatory therapy. The Protein- Ligand interaction plays a significant role in structural based drug designing. In the present work we have taken the receptor Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 and identified the drugs that are commonly used against SARS. They are Lopinavir, Ritonavir, Ribavirin, and Oseltamivir. The receptor Angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) was docked with above said drugs and the energy value obtained are as follows, Lopinavir (-292.3), Ritonavir (-325.6), Oseltamivir (- 229.1), Ribavirin (-208.8). Depending on the least energy value we have chosen the best two drugs out of the four conventional drugs. We tried to improve the binding efficiency and steric compatibility of the two drugs namely Ritonavir and Lopinavir. Several modifications were made to the probable functional groups (phenylic, ketonic groups in case of Ritonavir and carboxylic groups in case of Lopinavir respectively) which were interacting with the receptor molecule. Analogs were prepared by Marvin Sketch software and were docked using HEX docking software. Lopinavir analog 8 and Ritonavir analog 11 were detected with significant energy values and are probable lead molecule. It infers that some of the modified drugs are better than the original drugs. Further work can be carried out to improve the steric compatibility of the drug based upon the work done above for a more energy efficient binding of the drugs to the receptor.
Abstract: A serious problem on the WWW is finding reliable
information. Not everything found on the Web is true and the
Semantic Web does not change that in any way. The problem will be
even more crucial for the Semantic Web, where agents will be
integrating and using information from multiple sources. Thus, if an
incorrect premise is used due to a single faulty source, then any
conclusions drawn may be in error. Thus, statements published on
the Semantic Web have to be seen as claims rather than as facts, and
there should be a way to decide which among many possibly
inconsistent sources is most reliable. In this work, we propose a trust
model for the Semantic Web. The proposed model is inspired by the
use trust in human society. Trust is a type of social knowledge and
encodes evaluations about which agents can be taken as reliable
sources of information or services. Our proposed model allows
agents to decide which among different sources of information to
trust and thus act rationally on the semantic web.
Abstract: Microbial-induced calcite precipitation (MICP) is a
relatively green and sustainable soil improvement technique. It
utilizes biochemical process that exists naturally in soil to improve
engineering properties of soils. The calcite precipitation process is
uplifted by the mean of injecting higher concentration of urease
positive bacteria and reagents into the soil. The main objective of this
paper is to provide an overview of the factors affecting the MICP in
soil. Several factors were identified including nutrients, bacteria type,
geometric compatibility of bacteria, bacteria cell concentration,
fixation and distribution of bacteria in soil, temperature, reagents
concentration, pH, and injection method. These factors were found to
be essential for promoting successful MICP soil treatment.
Furthermore, a preliminary laboratory test was carried out to
investigate the potential application of the technique in improving the
shear strength and impermeability of a residual soil specimen. The
results showed that both shear strength and impermeability of
residual soil improved significantly upon MICP treatment. The
improvement increased with increasing soil density.
Abstract: On one hand, SNMP (Simple Network Management
Protocol) allows integrating different enterprise elements connected
through Internet into a standardized remote management. On the
other hand, as a consequence of the success of Intelligent Houses
they can be connected through Internet now by means of a residential
gateway according to a common standard called OSGi (Open
Services Gateway initiative). Due to the specifics of OSGi Service
Platforms and their dynamic nature, specific design criterions should
be defined to implement SNMP Agents for OSGi in order to integrate
them into the SNMP remote management. Based on the analysis of
the relation between both standards (SNMP and OSGi), this paper
shows how OSGi Service Platforms can be included into the SNMP
management of a global enterprise, giving implementation details
about an SNMP Agent solution and the definition of a new MIB
(Management Information Base) for managing OSGi platforms that
takes into account the specifics and dynamic nature of OSGi.
Abstract: In recent years, the number of the cases of information
leaks is increasing. Companies and Research Institutions make various
actions against information thefts and security accidents. One of the
actions is adoption of the crime prevention system, including the
monitoring system by surveillance cameras. In order to solve
difficulties of multiple cameras monitoring, we develop the automatic
human tracking system using mobile agents through multiple
surveillance cameras to track target persons. In this paper, we develop
the monitor which confirms mobile agents tracing target persons, and
the simulator of video picture analysis to construct the tracking
algorithm.
Abstract: In recent years multi-agent systems have emerged as one of the interesting architectures facilitating distributed collaboration and distributed problem solving. Each node (agent) of the network might pursue its own agenda, exploit its environment, develop its own problem solving strategy and establish required communication strategies. Within each node of the network, one could encounter a diversity of problem-solving approaches. Quite commonly the agents can realize their processing at the level of information granules that is the most suitable from their local points of view. Information granules can come at various levels of granularity. Each agent could exploit a certain formalism of information granulation engaging a machinery of fuzzy sets, interval analysis, rough sets, just to name a few dominant technologies of granular computing. Having this in mind, arises a fundamental issue of forming effective interaction linkages between the agents so that they fully broadcast their findings and benefit from interacting with others.
Abstract: Oilsands bitumen is an extremely important source of
energy for North America. However, due to the presence of large
molecules such as asphaltenes, the density and viscosity of the
bitumen recovered from these sands are much higher than those of
conventional crude oil. As a result the extracted bitumen has to be
diluted with expensive solvents, or thermochemically upgraded in
large, capital-intensive conventional upgrading facilities prior to
pipeline transport. This study demonstrates that globally abundant
natural zeolites such as clinoptilolite from Saint Clouds, New Mexico
and Ca-chabazite from Bowie, Arizona can be used as very effective
reagents for cracking and visbreaking of oilsands bitumen. Natural
zeolite cracked oilsands bitumen products are highly recoverable (up
to ~ 83%) using light hydrocarbons such as pentane, which indicates
substantial conversion of heavier fractions to lighter components.
The resultant liquid products are much less viscous, and have lighter
product distribution compared to those produced from pure thermal
treatment. These natural minerals impart similar effect on industrially
extracted Athabasca bitumen.
Abstract: In IETF RFC 2002, Mobile-IP was developed to
enable Laptobs to maintain Internet connectivity while moving
between subnets. However, the packet loss that comes from
switching subnets arises because network connectivity is lost while
the mobile host registers with the foreign agent and this encounters
large end-to-end packet delays. The criterion to initiate a simple and
fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign
agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be
considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the
modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure
as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was
designed and manipulated to describe the system in discrete events.
The heuristic of configuration file during practical Setup session for
registration parameters, on Cisco platform Router-1760 using IOS
12.3 (15)T and TFTP server S/W is created. Finally, stand-alone
performance simulations from Simulink Matlab, within each subnet
and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better end-toend
packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our Mathcad
analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It showed
lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using CIA
procedure-based early registration. Furthermore, it reported packets
flow between subnets to improve losses between subnets.
Abstract: Contact centres have been exemplars of scientific management in the discipline of operations management for more than a decade now. With the movement of industries from a resource based economy to knowledge based economy businesses have started to realize the customer eccentricity being the key to sustainability amidst high velocity of the market. However, as technologies have converged and advanced, so have the contact centres. Contact Centres have redirected the supply chains and the concept of retailing is highly diminished due to over exaggeration of cost reduction strategies. In conditions of high environmental velocity together with services featuring considerable information intensity contact centres will require up to date and enlightened agents to satisfy the demands placed upon them by those requesting their services. In this paper we examine salient factors such as Power Distance, Knowledge structures and the dynamics of job specialisation and enlargement to suggest critical success factors in the domain of contact centres.
Abstract: This paper presents a distributed intrusion
detection system IDS, based on the concept of specialized
distributed agents community representing agents with the
same purpose for detecting distributed attacks. The semantic of
intrusion events occurring in a predetermined network has been
defined. The correlation rules referring the process which our
proposed IDS combines the captured events that is distributed
both spatially and temporally. And then the proposed IDS tries
to extract significant and broad patterns for set of well-known
attacks. The primary goal of our work is to provide intrusion
detection and real-time prevention capability against insider
attacks in distributed and fully automated environments.
Abstract: The alternative technique for sterilization of culture
medium to replace autoclaving was carried out. For sterilization of
culture medium without autoclaving, some commercial pure essential
oils, bergamot oil, betel oil, cinnamon oil, lavender oil and turmeric
oil, were tested alone or in combinations with some disinfectants,
10% povidone-iodine and 2% iodine + 2.4% potassium iodide. Each
essential oil or combination was added to 25-mL Murashige and
Skoog (MS) medium before medium was solidified in a 120-mL
container, kept for 2 weeks before evaluating sterile conditions.
Treated media, supplemented with essential oils, were compared to
control medium, autoclaved at 121 degree Celsius for 15 min. In
vitro sterile conditions were found 20 – 100% from these treated
media compared to 100% sterile condition from autoclaved medium.
Treated media obtained 100% sterile conditions were chosen for
culturing chrysanthemum shoots. It was found that 10% povidoneiodine
in combination with cinnamon oil (3:1) and 2% iodine + 2.4%
potassium iodide in combination with lavender oil (1:3) at the
concentration of 36 3L/25 mL medium provided the promising
growth of shoot explants.
Abstract: Mobile agents are a powerful approach to develop distributed systems since they migrate to hosts on which they have the resources to execute individual tasks. In a dynamic environment like a peer-to-peer network, Agents have to be generated frequently and dispatched to the network. Thus they will certainly consume a certain amount of bandwidth of each link in the network if there are too many agents migration through one or several links at the same time, they will introduce too much transferring overhead to the links eventually, these links will be busy and indirectly block the network traffic, therefore, there is a need of developing routing algorithms that consider about traffic load. In this paper we seek to create cooperation between a probabilistic manner according to the quality measure of the network traffic situation and the agent's migration decision making to the next hop based on decision tree learning algorithms.
Abstract: Business Process Management (BPM) helps in optimizing the business processes inside an enterprise. But BPM architecture does not provide any help for extending the enterprise. Modern business environments and rapidly changing technologies are asking for brisk changes in the business processes. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can help in enabling the success of enterprise-wide BPM. SOA supports agility in software development that is directly related to achieve loose coupling of interacting software agents. Agility is a premium concern of the current software designing architectures. Together, BPM and SOA provide a perfect combination for enterprise computing. SOA provides the capabilities for services to be combined together and to support and create an agile, flexible enterprise. But there are still many questions to answer; BPM is better or SOA? and what is the future track of BPM and SOA? This paper tries to answer some of these important questions.
Abstract: Chikungunya virus (CHICKV) is an arboviruses belonging to family Tagoviridae and is transmitted to human through by mosquito (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus) bite. A large outbreak of chikungunya has been reported in India between 2006 and 2007, along with several other countries from South-East Asia and for the first time in Europe. It was for the first time that the CHICKV outbreak has been reported with mortality from Reunion Island and increased mortality from Asian countries. CHICKV affects all age groups, and currently there are no specific drugs or vaccine to cure the disease. The need of antiviral agents for the treatment of CHICKV infection and the success of virtual screening against many therapeutically valuable targets led us to carry out the structure based drug design against Chikungunya nSP2 protease (PDB: 3TRK). Highthroughput virtual screening of publicly available databases, ZINC12 and BindingDB, has been carried out using the Openeye tools and Schrodinger LLC software packages. Openeye Filter program has been used to filter the database and the filtered outputs were docked using HTVS protocol implemented in GLIDE package of Schrodinger LLC. The top HITS were further used for enriching the similar molecules from the database through vROCS; a shape based screening protocol implemented in Openeye. The approach adopted has provided different scaffolds as HITS against CHICKV protease. Three scaffolds: Indole, Pyrazole and Sulphone derivatives were selected based on the docking score and synthetic feasibility. Derivatives of Pyrazole were synthesized and submitted for antiviral screening against CHICKV.