Abstract: Like any sentient organism, a smart environment
relies first and foremost on sensory data captured from the real
world. The sensory data come from sensor nodes of different
modalities deployed on different locations forming a Wireless Sensor
Network (WSN). Embedding smart sensors in humans has been a
research challenge due to the limitations imposed by these sensors
from computational capabilities to limited power. In this paper, we
first propose a practical WSN application that will enable blind
people to see what their neighboring partners can see. The challenge
is that the actual mapping between the input images to brain pattern
is too complex and not well understood. We also study the
connectivity problem in 3D/2D wireless sensor networks and propose
distributed efficient algorithms to accomplish the required
connectivity of the system. We provide a new connectivity algorithm
CDCA to connect disconnected parts of a network using cooperative
diversity. Through simulations, we analyze the connectivity gains
and energy savings provided by this novel form of cooperative
diversity in WSNs.
Abstract: The efficient use of available licensed spectrum is
becoming more and more critical with increasing demand and usage
of the radio spectrum. This paper shows how the use of spectrum as
well as dynamic spectrum management can be effectively managed
and spectrum allocation schemes in the wireless communication
systems be implemented and used, in future. This paper would be an
attempt towards better utilization of the spectrum. This research will
focus on the decision-making process mainly, with an
assumption that the radio environment has already been sensed and
the QoS requirements for the application have been specified either
by the sensed radio environment or by the secondary user itself. We
identify and study the characteristic parameters of Cognitive Radio
and use Genetic Algorithm for spectrum allocation. Performance
evaluation is done using MATLAB toolboxes.
Abstract: Where renewable energy sources, solar, hydro, wind are available the remote communities and businesses can be provided with the most reliable and affordable source of electrical energy. This paper presents a model of safari rest contains all the necessary services for the interested tourists who visit the safari Sinai desert. The PV energy system provides the rural energy needs of remote communities. A photovoltaic renewable energy system is designed to feed the global Ac and Dc electrical required load of this safari rest . The benefits of photovoltaic renewable energy at rural applications are its versatility and convenience. This model of safari rest must be taken in consideration by Egyptian Government as it will provide the tourism plane by new interested tourism field which put a big spot on Red sea area: El Ghordaka.
Abstract: Fiber optic sensor technology offers the possibility of
sensing different parameters like strain, temperature, pressure in
harsh environment and remote locations. these kinds of sensors
modulates some features of the light wave in an optical fiber such an
intensity and phase or use optical fiber as a medium for transmitting
the measurement information.
The advantages of fiber optic sensors in contrast to conventional
electrical ones make them popular in different applications and now a
day they consider as a key component in improving industrial
processes, quality control systems, medical diagnostics, and
preventing and controlling general process abnormalities.
This paper is an introduction to fiber optic sensor technology and
some of the applications that make this branch of optic technology,
which is still in its early infancy, an interesting field.
Abstract: Recent changes in food retailing structure have led to the development of large supercenters in suburban areas of the United States. These changes have led some authors to suggest that there are food deserts in some urban areas, where food is difficult to access, especially for disadvantaged consumers. This study tests the food desert hypothesis by comparing the distance from food retailers to food secure and food insecure households in one urban, Midwest neighborhood. This study utilizes GIS to compare household survey respondent locations against the location of various types of area food retailers. Results of this study indicate no apparent difference between food secure and insecure households in the reported importance of distance on the decision to shop at various retailers. However, there were differences in the spatial relationship between households and retailers. Food insecure households tended to be located slightly farther from large food retailers and slightly closer to convenience stores. Furthermore, food insecure households reported traveling slightly farther to their primary food retailer. The differences between the two groups was, however, relatively small.
Abstract: Biplot can be used to evaluate cultivars for their oil
percent potential and stability and to evaluate trial sites for their
discriminating ability and representativeness. Multi-environmental
trial (MET) data for oil percent of 10 open pollinating sunflower
cultivars were analyzed to investigate the genotype-environment
interactions. The genotypes were evaluated in four locations with
different climatic conditions in Iran in 2010. In each location, a
Randomized Complete Block design with four replications was used.
According to both mean and stability, Zaria, Master and R453, had
highest performances among all cultivars. The graphical analysis
identified best cultivar for each environment. Cultivars Berezans and
Record performed best in Khoy and Islamabad. Zaria and R453 were
the best genotypes in Sari and Karaj followed by Master and Favorit.
The GGE bi-plot indicated two mega-environments, group one
contained Karaj, Khoy and Islamabad and the second group
contained Sari. The best discriminating location was Karaj followed
with Khoy, Islamabad and Sari. The best representative genotypes
were Zaria, R453, Master and Favorit. Ranking of ten cultivars based
their oil percent was as Zaria > R453 ≈ Master ≈ Favorit > Record ≈
Berezans > Sor > Lakumka > Bulg3 > Bulg5.
Abstract: This paper describes an application of a dual satellite
geolocation (DSG) system on identifying and locating the unknown
source of uplink sweeping interference. The geolocation system
integrates the method of joint time difference of arrival (TDOA) and
frequency difference of arrival (FDOA) with ephemeris correction
technique which successfully demonstrated high accuracy in
interference source location. The factors affecting the location error
were also discussed.
Abstract: Selecting the word translation from a set of target
language words, one that conveys the correct sense of source word
and makes more fluent target language output, is one of core
problems in machine translation. In this paper we compare the 3
methods of estimating word translation probabilities for selecting the
translation word in Thai – English Machine Translation. The 3
methods are (1) Method based on frequency of word translation, (2)
Method based on collocation of word translation, and (3) Method
based on Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm. For evaluation
we used Thai – English parallel sentences generated by NECTEC.
The method based on EM algorithm is the best method in comparison
to the other methods and gives the satisfying results.
Abstract: People nowadays love to travel around the world.
Regardless of their location and time, they especially Muslims still need to perform their five times prayer. Normally for travelers, they
need to bring maps, compass and for Muslim, they even have to bring Qibla pointer when they travel. It is slightly difficult to
determine the Qibla direction and to know the time for each prayer. In this paper we present a new electronic device called Universal Qibla and Prayer Time Finder to locate the Qibla direction and to determine each prayer time based on the current user-s location. This device use PIC microcontroller equipped with digital compass and
Global Positioning System (GPS) where it will display the exact Qibla direction and prayer time automatically at any place in the world. This device is reliable, user friendly and accurate in
determining the Qibla direction and prayer time.
Abstract: With the advent of emerging personal computing paradigms such as ubiquitous and mobile computing, Web contents are becoming accessible from a wide range of mobile devices. Since these devices do not have the same rendering capabilities, Web contents need to be adapted for transparent access from a variety of client agents. Such content adaptation results in better rendering and faster delivery to the client device. Nevertheless, Web content adaptation sets new challenges for semantic markup. This paper presents an advanced components platform, called MorfeoSMC, enabling the development of mobility applications and services according to a channel model based on Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles. It then goes on to describe the potential for integration with the Semantic Web through a novel framework of external semantic annotation of mobile Web contents. The role of semantic annotation in this framework is to describe the contents of individual documents themselves, assuring the preservation of the semantics during the process of adapting content rendering, as well as to exploit these semantic annotations in a novel user profile-aware content adaptation process. Semantic Web content adaptation is a way of adding value to and facilitates repurposing of Web contents (enhanced browsing, Web Services location and access, etc).
Abstract: In this paper we present an energy efficient match-line
(ML) sensing scheme for high-speed ternary content-addressable
memory (TCAM). The proposed scheme isolates the sensing unit of
the sense amplifier from the large and variable ML capacitance. It
employs feedback in the sense amplifier to successfully detect a
match while keeping the ML voltage swing low. This reduced voltage
swing results in large energy saving. Simulation performed using
130nm 1.2V CMOS logic shows at least 30% total energy saving in
our scheme compared to popular current race (CR) scheme for
similar search speed. In terms of speed, dynamic energy, peak power
consumption and transistor count our scheme also shows better
performance than mismatch-dependant (MD) power allocation
technique which also employs feedback in the sense amplifier.
Additionally, the implementation of our scheme is simpler than CR
or MD scheme because of absence of analog control voltage and
programmable delay circuit as have been used in those schemes.
Abstract: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the
epidemiology of waterborne diarrhoeal among children aged 6-36
months old in Busia town, western Kenya. The study was carried out
between Feb. 2008 and Feb. 2010. Cases of diarrhoea reported in 385
households were linked to household water handling practices. A
mother with a child of 6-36 months old was also included in the
study. Diarrhoea prevalence among children 6-36 months was 16.7%
in Busia town, Bwamani (19.6%) and Mayenje (10.6%) clustered in
Mayenje sub-location reported the highest and the lowest prevalence
of diarrhoea. There was a positive correlation between the prevalence
of diarrhoea in children and the level of the mother-s education,
29.9% (n= 100). Diarrhoea cases decreased in range from 35.5% (n
=102) to 4.8% (n= 16), corresponding to increase in age from 6-35
months on average. In conclusion, prevalence of diarrhoea in
children of 6-36 months old was 16.7% in Busia town. This was
higher in children whose mother-s age was below 18 years and with
low level of education, the rate decreased with increase in age of
children. Prevalence of diarrhoea in children aged 6-36months in
households was higher in children aged 6-17 and 36 months and
whose mothers were less educated and fell between the ages of 18-24
years. The Influence of human activities at the main source of
drinking water on the prevalence of diarrhoea in these children was
insignificant.
Abstract: Although the level crossing concept has been the subject of intensive investigation over the last few years, certain problems of great interest remain unsolved. One of these concern is distribution of threshold levels. This paper presents a new threshold level allocation schemes for level crossing based on nonuniform sampling. Intuitively, it is more reasonable if the information rich regions of the signal are sampled finer and those with sparse information are sampled coarser. To achieve this objective, we propose non-linear quantization functions which dynamically assign the number of quantization levels depending on the importance of the given amplitude range. Two new approaches to determine the importance of the given amplitude segment are presented. The proposed methods are based on exponential and logarithmic functions. Various aspects of proposed techniques are discussed and experimentally validated. Its efficacy is investigated by comparison with uniform sampling.
Abstract: A big organization may have multiple branches spread across different locations. Processing of data from these branches becomes a huge task when innumerable transactions take place. Also, branches may be reluctant to forward their data for centralized processing but are ready to pass their association rules. Local mining may also generate a large amount of rules. Further, it is not practically possible for all local data sources to be of the same size. A model is proposed for discovering valid rules from different sized data sources where the valid rules are high weighted rules. These rules can be obtained from the high frequency rules generated from each of the data sources. A data source selection procedure is considered in order to efficiently synthesize rules. Support Equalization is another method proposed which focuses on eliminating low frequency rules at the local sites itself thus reducing the rules by a significant amount.
Abstract: As known that efficiency of photovoltaic cells is not
high as desired level. Efficiency of PVs could be improved by
selecting convenient locations that have high solar irradiation,
sunshine duration, mild temperature, low level air pollution and dust
concentration. Additionally, some environmental parameters called
derating factors effect to decrease PV efficiencies such as cloud, high
temperature, aerosol optical depth, high dust concentration, shadow,
snow, humidity etc. In this paper, all parameters that effect PV
efficiency are considered in detail under climatic conditions of
Istanbul. A 750 Wp PV system with measurement devices is
constructed in Maslak campus of Istanbul Technical University.
Abstract: The iris recognition technology is the most accurate,
fast and less invasive one compared to other biometric techniques
using for example fingerprints, face, retina, hand geometry, voice or
signature patterns. The system developed in this study has the
potential to play a key role in areas of high-risk security and can
enable organizations with means allowing only to the authorized
personnel a fast and secure way to gain access to such areas. The
paper aim is to perform the iris region detection and iris inner and
outer boundaries localization. The system was implemented on
windows platform using Visual C# programming language. It is easy
and efficient tool for image processing to get great performance
accuracy. In particular, the system includes two main parts. The first
is to preprocess the iris images by using Canny edge detection
methods, segments the iris region from the rest of the image and
determine the location of the iris boundaries by applying Hough
transform. The proposed system tested on 756 iris images from 60
eyes of CASIA iris database images.
Abstract: Vortex-shedding phenomenon of the flow
around combined two bodies having various geometries and sizes has been investigated experimentally in the Reynolds
number range between 4.1x103 and 1.75x104. To see the effect
of the rotation of the bodies on the vortex shedding, the
combined bodies were rotated from 0° to 180°. The combined models have a cross section composing of a main circular cylinder and an attached circular or square cylinder. Results
have shown that Strouhal numbers for two cases were
changed considerably with the angle of incidence, while it was found to be largely independent of Reynolds number at 150. Characteristics of the vortex formation region and
location of flow attachments, reattachments, and separations
were observed by means of the flow visualizations.
Depending on the inclination angle the effects of flow
attachment, separation and reattachment on vortex-shedding phenomenon have been discussed.
Abstract: Resource Discovery in Grids is critical for efficient
resource allocation and management. Heterogeneous nature and
dynamic availability of resources make resource discovery a
challenging task. As numbers of nodes are increasing from tens to
thousands, scalability is essentially desired. Peer-to-Peer (P2P)
techniques, on the other hand, provide effective implementation of
scalable services and applications. In this paper we propose a model
for resource discovery in Condor Middleware by using the four axis
framework defined in P2P approach. The proposed model enhances
Condor to incorporate functionality of a P2P system, thus aim to
make Condor more scalable, flexible, reliable and robust.
Abstract: This paper presents a practical scheme that can be used for allocating the transmission loss to generators and loads. In this scheme first the share of a generator or load on the current through a branch is determined using Z-bus modified matrix. Then the current components are decomposed and the branch loss allocation is obtained. A motivation of proposed scheme is to improve the results of Z-bus method and to reach more fair allocation. The proposed scheme has been implemented and tested on several networks. To achieve practical and applicable results, the proposed scheme is simulated and compared on the transmission network (400kv) of Khorasan region in Iran and the 14-bus standard IEEE network. The results show that the proposed scheme is comprehensive and fair to allocating the energy losses of a power market to its participants.
Abstract: Despite the availability of natural disaster related time series data for last 110 years, there is no forecasting tool available to humanitarian relief organizations to determine forecasts for emergency logistics planning. This study develops a forecasting tool based on identifying probability distributions. The estimates of the parameters are used to calculate natural disaster forecasts. Further, the determination of aggregate forecasts leads to efficient pre-disaster planning. Based on the research findings, the relief agencies can optimize the various resources allocation in emergency logistics planning.