Assessing the sustainability of non-renewable brackish groundwater in feeding an RO desalination plant in Bahrain

The Rus-Umm Er Radhuma aquifer in Bahrain is a non-renewable source of brackish water (8-15 g/L), which forms a lens underlain everywhere with brines of over 100 g/L. Aquifer utilization has started in 1984 to feed a reverse osmosis (RO) desalination plant, with an economic life of 25 years (2010). Future plant upgrade strategy is formulated around boosting the plant production, which will require increasing the we llfield abstraction, in addition to a possible future rehabilitation program to extend the plant life by another 15 years (2025). The limiting factor in expanding the RO plant and its rehabilitation is the future feed water salinity, which have to be assessed before any investments are made to expand the RO plant and commission additional abstraction wells and implement the rehabilitation program. The aquifer management is based on mining a one-time brackish water reserve stored in the aquifer, the main management objective is stated as to sustain the aquifer future availability in feeding the desalination plant with a specified salinity limit of 20 g/L over the economic life of the plant of 25 years (1985-2010), and also over the plant extension period by rehabilitation (2010-2025). The stochastic analysis methodology utilizing conditional simulation is applied to conduct a risk assessment of violating these two pre-specified sustainability constraints under the proposed abstraction increase; and provided a tool to aid the decision-making process in the development and management of the aquifer under large uncertainties. Simulation results indicated that the risk of having the salinity of the wellfi eld produced water to increase due to the proposed increase in the wellfield abstraction to reach 20 g/L over the economic life of the plant (2010) is very small and minimal. However, it is questionable that the feed water salinity will be maintained under the proposed rehabilitation program to extend the plant economic life by another 15 years (2011-2025). For this option, it is recommended that model post-auditing be performed, and new updated predictions should be made as more data of potentiometry. salinity. and hydraulic parameters become available.     

Speech enhancement with an adaptive Wiener filter

This paper proposes an adaptive Wiener filtering method for speech enhancement. This method depends on the adaptation of the filter transfer function from sample to sample based on the speech signal statistics; the local mean and the local variance. It is implemented in the time domain rather than in the frequency domain to accommodate for the time-varying nature of the speech signals. The proposed method is compared to the traditional frequency-domain Wiener filtering, spectral subtraction and wavelet denoising methods using different speech quality metrics. The simulation results reveal the superiority of the proposed Wiener filtering method in the case of Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) as well as colored noise.     

Synthesis and Polymerization of Cationic bis(cyclopentadienyliron)arene Complexes Containing Arylazo Dyes

The synthesis of the title complexes was achieved via the reaction of -p-dichlorobenzene- -cyclopentadienyliron cations with 4,4′-bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)valeric acid to produce the diiron complexes which were then reacted with a number of arylazo dyes to give cationic bis(cyclopentadienyliron)arene complexes containing the arylazo dyes. These iron-containing monomers were subsequently polymerized via nucleophilic aromatic substitution using 1,8-octanedithiol, 4,4′-thiobisbenzenethiol, or bisphenol A to produce the desired coloured cationic organoiron polymers. The weight – average molecular weights were estimated to range from 11,800 to 31,600. UV–vis studies conducted in dimethylformamide (DMF) showed that the metallated polymers exhibited of 412–491 nm. Addition of HCl to the polymer solution caused a bathochromic shift into the range of 515–530 nm. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) revealed that the iron moieties were cleaved between 205 and 248 °C while the polyether/thioether backbone degraded between 380 and 613 °C. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) showed that the polymers exhibited glass transition temperatures (Tg) ranging from 106 to 184°C.This paper is dedicated to Professor Richard J. Puddephatt in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field of metal-containing polymers.     

Fuzzy-based hunger games search algorithm for global optimization and feature selection using medical data

Neural Computing and Applications - Feature selection (FS) is one of the basic data preprocessing steps in data mining and machine learning. It is used to reduce feature size and increase model...     

Big Data Analytics: Deep Content-Based Prediction with Sampling Perspective

The world of information technology is more than ever being flooded with huge amounts of data, nearly 2.5 quintillion bytes every day. This large stream of data is called big data, and the amount is increasing each day. This research uses a technique called sampling, which selects a representative subset of the data points, manipulates and analyzes this subset to identify patterns and trends in the larger dataset being examined, and finally, creates models. Sampling uses a small proportion of the original data for analysis and model training, so that it is relatively faster while maintaining data integrity and achieving accurate results. Two deep neural networks, AlexNet and DenseNet, were used in this research to test two sampling techniques, namely sampling with replacement and reservoir sampling. The dataset used for this research was divided into three classes: acceptable, flagged as easy, and flagged as hard. The base models were trained with the whole dataset, whereas the other models were trained on 50% of the original dataset. There were four combinations of model and sampling technique. The F-measure for the AlexNet model was 0.807 while that for the DenseNet model was 0.808. Combination 1 was the AlexNet model and sampling with replacement, achieving an average F-measure of 0.8852. Combination 3 was the AlexNet model and reservoir sampling. It had an average F-measure of 0.8545. Combination 2 was the DenseNet model and sampling with replacement, achieving an average F-measure of 0.8017. Finally, combination 4 was the DenseNet model and reservoir sampling. It had an average F-measure of 0.8111. Overall, we conclude that both models trained on a sampled dataset gave equal or better results compared to the base models, which used the whole dataset.     

Behaviour of sand–clay mixtures for road pavement subgrade

Materials forming sand grains and colluvial soil deposits have a distinct structure, consisting of a composite matrix of coarse and fine soil grains. The influence of sand grains content on the behaviour of sand–clay mixtures was investigated by a series of intensive laboratory experiments. The California bearing ratio (CBR), unconfined compression strength (UCS) and compaction tests were carried out on various contents of sand and clay mixtures. The sand–clay mixtures were prepared with sand contents of 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50% by weight. The laboratory tests on these mixtures have indicated that their behaviour will depend on the relative concentration of the sand and clay samples. The results of the tests showed a decrease in the UCS, and an increase the CBR values with an increase in the amount of sand. An increase in dry unit weight and a decrease in respective moisture content by an increase in the amount of sand were observed in the compaction tests.     

The performance of multiwavelets based OFDM system under different channel conditions

In wireless communication reception, the reliability of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is limited because of the time-varying nature of the channel. This causes inter-carrier interference (ICI) and increases inaccuracies in channel tracking. This can effectively be avoided at the cost of power loss and bandwidth expansion by inserting a cyclic prefix guard interval before each block of parallel data symbols. However, this guard interval decreases the spectral efficiency of the OFDM system as the corresponding amount. Recently, it was found that based on Haar-orthonormal wavelets, discrete wavelet-based OFDM (DWT-OFDM) is capable of reducing the inter symbol interference (ISI) and ICI, which are caused by the loss in orthogonality between the carriers. DWT-OFDM can also support much higher spectrum efficiency than discrete Fourier-based OFDM (DFT-OFDM). In this paper the DFT-OFDM is replaced by Multiwavelets OFDM (DMWT-OFDM) in order to further reduce the level of interference and increase spectral efficiency. It is found that proposed Multiwavelet design achieves much lower bit error rates, increases signal to noise power ratio (SNR), and can be used as an alternative to the conventional OFDM. The proposed OFDM system was modeled tested, and its performance was found under different channel conditions.     

An Information Services Architecture Model Based on Data Processing Stages

The author's simple model for an information services architecture is intended as a common frame of reference for both business and technical practitioners and groups various aspects of computing into four distinct layers based on data processing stages. These layers cover data life-cycle states from the time data is generated, stored, and analyzed, to when it's delivered and used. The model incorporates a link with typical enterprise architecture layers.     

Charge transport mechanism of graphite‐nanosheet‐loaded rubber nanocomposites

Nitrile butadiene rubber loaded with different concentrations of thin graphite nanosheets have been successfully prepared by using a two‐roll mill. The percolation concentration of the nanocomposites was 0.5 phr. The I–V characteristic curves showed that the nanocomposites exhibited ohmic behaviour at a certain voltage and then non‐linear behaviour. The Richardson–Schottky and Poole–Frenkel models were used to investigate the reason for the space charge. The experimental data fit the Schottky model well. The conductivity as a function of temperature was also studied and the data were fitted by using the Mott relation. The Mott relation showed that as the concentration of graphite nanosheets in the rubber composite increases, the hopping distance between the graphite nanosheet layers decreases, which enhances the conductivity of the nanocomposite at low concentrations. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry