Multi‐agent‐based sharing power economy for a smart community

In this paper, a multi‐agent‐based locally administrated power distribution hub (PDH) for social welfare is proposed that optimizes energy consumption, allocation, and management of battery energy storage systems (ESSs) for a smart community. Initially, formulation regarding optimum selection of a power storage system for a home (in terms of storage capacity) is presented. Afterwards, the concept of sharing economy is inducted in the community by demonstrating PDH. PDH is composed of multiple small‐scale battery ESSs (each owned by community users), which are connected together to form a unified‐ESS. Proposed PDH offers a localized switching mechanism that takes decision of whether to buy electricity from utility or use unified‐ESS. This decision is based on the price of electricity at ‘time of use’ and ‘state of charge’ of unified‐ESS. In response to power use or share, electricity bills are created for individual smart homes by incrementing or decrementing respective submeters. There is no buying or selling of power from PDH; there is power sharing with the concept of ‘no profit, no loss’. The objective of the proposed PDH is to limit the purchase of electricity on ‘high priced’ hours from the utility. This not only benefits the utility at crucial hours but also provides effective use of power at the demand side. The proposed multi‐agent system depicts the concept of sharing power economy within a community. Finally, the proposed model is analyzed analytically, considering on‐peak, off‐peak, and mid‐level (mid‐peak) prices of a real‐time price signal during 24 h of a day. Results clearly show vital financial benefits of ‘sharing power economy’ for end users and efficient use of power within the smart community. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimated anthropometric measurements of Turkish adults and effects of age and geographical regions

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the anthropometric characteristics of the Turkish population by geographical region, age and gender. A survey of 4205 samples consisting of 2263 male and 1942 female civilian subjects was done in the year of 2007. It contains data from all seven geographical regions of Turkey and from all age groups. In the study, height and weight of the subjects were measured by age. Then, these data were used for estimating anthropometric measurements of the Turkish population. The main result of this study is the anthropometric measurements table for Turkey which shows 37 measurements that are commonly used in industry. The anthropometric measurements that are used to make the designs fit human shape and the human/machine or human/environment interface should be updated through time due to changing body types over time (secular trends) due to numerous factors. In this study, we not only update these variables, which are 30 years old, but also investigate the age and region effects on stature and weight of Turkish population.Relevance to industry: During the design phase of a product, incorporating anthropometric information would yield more efficient designs, which are more user friendly, safer and enable higher performance and productivity. So the anthropometric measurements table that is extracted from this study can be used by industry to produce better human oriented products for Turkish population.     

Using an accurate singularity extraction technique to the MFIE for the scattering analysis of small objects

The method of moments (MoM) solution on the magnetic field integral equation (MFIE) for electromagnetic scattering problems of conducting objects with Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) basis functions requires the evaluation of almost singular double surface integrals over triangular subdomains. Calculating these integrals accurately is essential for the successful solution of the MFIE by MoM especially for small sharp-edged conducting objects. This paper studies the singularity of the MFIE and uses an accurate singularity extraction technique to avoid logarithmic singularity of the integration on the testing triangles for the MFIE. Based on the numerical examples of several small sharp-edged conducting objects, it is demonstrated that the accuracy of the MFIE is improved greatly with the use of the new singularity extraction technique.     

Comparison of Conventional and Cross-Layer Multimedia Transport Schemes for Wireless Networks

Three competing schemes have been proposed for multimedia transport over broadband wireless channels: (a) traditional UDP (Postel, The User Datagram Protocol, 1980 [1]), (b) semi-cross-layer UDP-Lite (The Lightweight User Datagram Protocol, 2004 [2]), and (c) cross-layer header estimation (Khayam et al., IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 9(2):377–385, 2007 [3]; Khayam and Radha, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 6(11):3946–3954, 2007 [4]). In all these schemes, corrupted and lost packets are recovered using FEC at the application layer. In this paper, we analytically and experimentally compare the performances of these broadband wireless multimedia schemes. First, we derive lower bounds on the excepted FEC redundancy required by ideal cross-layer header estimation, UDP and UDP-Lite over an arbitrary-order Markov wireless channel. We show that under realistic wireless channel conditions, the cross-layer header estimation scheme always requires lesser redundancy than UDP and UDP-Lite. We then propose a practical minimum distance decoding (MDD) header estimation scheme, which is receiver-based, low complexity and highly accurate. Trace-driven multimedia experiments over wireless LANs demonstrate that MDD header estimation requires significantly lesser FEC redundancy and renders better video quality than existing schemes.     

Groundwater use and policy options for sustainable management in Southern Iraq

An important challenge facing the design of sustainable aquifer management plans is weak primary data on aquifer recharge and use patterns. Weak data limit the ability of policy makers to design efficient aquifer protection plans. The objectives of this article are (1) to estimate groundwater use patterns for an important food-producing region of southern Iraq, the Bahr Al-Najaf Basin; (2) to compare groundwater use patterns with the renewable groundwater supply; and (3) to describe a sustainable groundwater policy alternative to current use patterns. For this study, original data on groundwater pumping were secured for 2006–2011. The data show a pattern of unsustainable groundwater withdrawals. A policy intervention is described in which pumping permits could be assigned to groundwater users to promote sustainable use. Allowing or encouraging the permits to be transferable through trading to higher-valued uses could reduce the economic costs of protecting the aquifer while promoting its sustainable use.     

Addition of milk to tea infusions: Helpful or harmful? Evidence from in vitro and in vivo studies on antioxidant properties

Tea consumption is practised as a tradition, and has shown potential to improve human health. Maximal uptake of tea antioxidants and milk proteins without a negative impact on tea flavor is highly desired by consumers. There is a conflicting evidence of the effect of milk addition to tea on antioxidant activity. Differences in the type of tea, the composition, type and amount of milk, preparation method of tea–milk infusions, the assays used to measure antioxidant activity, and sampling size likely account for different findings. Interactions between tea polyphenols and milk proteins, especially between catechins and caseins, could account for a decrease in antioxidant activity, although other mechanisms are also possible, given the similar effects between soy and bovine milk. The role of milk fat globules and the milk fat globule membrane surface is also important when considering interactions and loss of polyphenolic antioxidant activity, which has not been addressed in the literature.     

Application of a novel formulation to the MFIE using RWG basis functions in method of moments

We investigate the inaccuracy of the traditional magnetic field integral equation (MFIE) in the analysis of scattering of small conducting objects, with the use of Rao–Wilton–Glisson (RWG) basis functions. As a remedy to such problems, we propose to use a novel impedance matrix elements (IME) formulation of the MFIE, which is suitable to use RWG basis functions. Techniques to calculate the IME of the new formulation are outlined. It is shown that similar technique to compute the IME of the MFIE resulted from the use of curl-conforming basis functions can also be used here. Based on the examples of several relatively small conducting objects, it is demonstrated that significant improvement in the accuracy of the MFIE can be obtained for this new IME formulation with the use of RWG basis functions.     

Irrigation Development and Rural Poverty in Gujarat,India: A Disaggregated Analysis

Abstract

There has been renewed interest during recent times in the impact of irrigation development on rural poverty. For long, researchers asked whether irrigation development reduces the poverty of irrigators. However, the question being asked now is: does investing in irrigation—rather than in other public works—help reduce rural poverty in a region? Using Government of Gujarat's 1997 census of Below Poverty Line (BPL) households as well as the Village Amenity Survey of the same year, this paper explores the interplay between irrigation development and rural poverty in 177 predominantly rural talukas, which is an administrative unit with a population of around 100,000-150,000 people, of Gujarat state in western India. Our analysis shows that for the design of poverty-targeting programs, two variables have the highest appeal: primary education infrastructure and improved land productivity through irrigation. It also suggests that, over the long run, irrigation benefits far transcend the command areas of irrigation systems. As a result, irrigation impact studies focused at farm or command area level seriously underestimate overall livelihood impacts of irrigation development. This is because intensively irrigated areas act as magnets that attract rural poverty from their surround, especially from other dry areas. Population pressure on farm lands thus tends to get redistributed according to the carrying capacity of farm lands. Across 177 predominantly rural talukas of Gujarat, we find: a) an inverse relationship between land use intensity and land-man ratio; and b) as land productivity (output/hectare of net sown area) declines, output per rural person declines too, but far more slowly than would have been the case without the “magnet effect.”