FROM ARTIFICIAL LIFE TO REAL LIFE: COMPUTER SIMULATION OF PLANT GROWTH∗

Artificial life is by itself an important area of scientific investigation. However, this scientific discipline will be more effective if it can also help one to understand how natural living systems really work. It is argued that plant growth is an area where the studies in artificial life lend themselves to computer modeling of what really happens in nature. An approach for such modeling is described, and the initial results of implementing this approach for a corn plant growth are presented.     

GEOMETRIC PROGRAMMING. A NEW HYBRID ALGORITHM BASED ON LIAPUNOV CONCEPTS (MADLAP)

This article concerns the development of a simple yet very efficient heuristic procedure for optimizing the design or a reactor system employing continuous stirred tanks in series using Michaelis-Menten kinetics. The heuristic procedure employs a modified form or the well known Golden Search method to estimate the optimal number of reactors to be employed. The procedure was tested on an IBM personal computer under a wide range of values for three model parameters, namely the economy or scale factor, the scaled Michaelis-Menten constant and the desired degree of conversion to be attained. The results of this study indicated that the heuristic optimization procedure is capable of obtaining solutions that are either identical or very close to the actual optimal solutions in a very efficient manner.     

Gyres off the Somali coast and western boundary currents in the Bay of Bengal during the south-west monsoon

Satellite remotely-sensed sea surface temperature (SST) data were obtained during the initial phase of the onset of the south-west monsoon in the north-western Indian Ocean for the years 1987and 1988. Large wedge-like areas of upwelled water during 1988 were observed at 5°Nand 10°N after the Somali current spinup, indicative of a two-gyre circulation in the Somali current system. Satellite infrared observations of the Bay of Bengal during the early February 1990revealed the existenceof two bands of warm water that resembled a western boundary current (WBC) along the east coast of India. A warm core eddy, with a major axis of nearly 120km, appeared at 89°E and 19°N at the end of the axis of the current. The existence of the two gyre system ofT the Somali coast and the presence or absence of the WBC in the Bay of Bengal in response to the onset of the summer monsoon has been discussed in detail.     

An analytical comparison of long and short term contracts

In this paper, we describe an analytical model to determine contracting policies for a firm that purchases components from external suppliers. The model evaluates the tradeoff between the flexibility offered by short term contracts arid the fixed investments, improvement opportunities and price certainty associated with long term contracts. We show that long term contracts may not always be optimal, and discuss conditions under which short term contracts may be justified. During a recent survey of supply managers, we observed that managers often tend to participate in short term contracts, even though they claim to seek long term relationships with suppliers. Sensitivity analysis of our model provides some explanation for this observed inconsistency. We also discuss managerial implications of the analysis.     

AN APPROACH TO REASONING ABOUT HYBRID SYSTEMS

A formal approach is presented for proving temporal properties of dynamic systems. Its main advantage is that it can be used to prove properties of hybrid systems, i.e. those whose state contains both discrete and continuous parameters. In contrast, most current temporal reasoning techniques are restricted either to purely discrete systems or to purely continuous systems. Our approach is based upon a new modeling technique called DMOD. A DMOD model of a system defines the causality relation between events in the system, using definite clauses, i.e. logic programs. Thereby, the problem of reasoning about hybrid systems is reduced to one of reasoning about the behavior of definite clauses. As these possess a simple proof theory, reasoning is substantially simplified.     

DESIGN OF STRUCTURE CONTROL SYSTEM USING BOUNDED LQG

An approach for designing a structure and its control system for vibration suppression is presented. The control system is based on the Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) and is modified to allow bounds on the actuators forces to simulate real actuators. The simultaneous design of the structure and control problem is formulated as a nonlinear optimization problem. The system is designed for minimum weight where the weight includes both the weight of the structure and the weight of the actuators. The weight of an actuator is assumed to be proportional to the bound on the maximum force that it can supply. The design variables include the cross-sectional areas of the structural members and the bounds on the actuator forces. The constraints are imposed on the closed loop frequency distribution and the time to reduce the energy of vibration to a small portion of the initial vibrational energy of the system. The structure is analyzed using a finite element approach. For illustration of the design approach, a truss structure idealized with rod elements is used.     

Geometric correction and radiometric normalisation of NOAA AVHRR data for fisheries applications

Sea surface temperature (SST) has been found useful for locating potential fishing grounds (PFGs). Thermal data of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) was acquired using a microcomputer (PC/AT 486) based Direct Reception and Processing Terminal (DRPT) developed in-house to map surface thermal fronts. Geometric correction using orbital ephemeris and ground control points (GCPs) resulted in locational accuracy of 1·73 km by 2·1 km. Besides, the corrections for artificially lowering SST in case of passes with large satellite zenith angles (LSZA) through a radiance normalization based on the mean vectors and dispersion matrices to make it comparable with small satellite zenith angle (SSZA) pass is presented in this letter.     

Remote sensing of phytoplankton An attempt from the Landsat Thematic Mapper

Abstract

An atmospheric correction scheme using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) bands 1, 2 and 4 was developed and the data corrected for atmospheric effects due to Rayleigh scattering and aerosols. Secondly phytoplankton pigment mapping was achieved through substitution of corrected radiances in TM bands 1 and 2 into a bio-optical algorithm developed for the study area off Azhikal in the Arabian Sea. A C map showing near-surface concentrations of phytoplankton pigments (mgm_?3)and a K map showing the pigment distribution (m?1) in one attenuation length were generated.     

ESAP: Efficient and secure authentication protocol for roaming user in mobile communication networks

The Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network is proposed to mitigate the security problems and vulnerabilities observed in the mobile telecommunication system. However, the GSM network is vulnerable to different kinds of attacks such as redirection attack, impersonation attack and Man in-the Middle (MiTM) attack. The possibility of these attacks makes the wireless mobile system vulnerable to fraudulent access and eavesdropping. Different authentication protocols of GSM were proposed to overcome the drawbacks but many of them lead to network signalling overload and increases the call set-up time. In this paper, an efficient and secure authentication and key agreement protocol (ESAP-AKA) is proposed to overcome the flaws of existing authentication protocol for roaming users in the GSM network. The formal verification of the proposed protocol is presented by BAN logic and the security analysis is shown using the AVISPA tool. The security analysis shows that the proposed protocol avoids the different possible attacks on the communication network. The performance analysis based on the fluid flow mobility model shows that the proposed protocol reduces the communication overhead of the network by reducing a number of messages. On an average, the protocol reduces 60% of network signalling congestion overhead as compared with other existing GSM-AKA protocols. Moreover, the protocol not only removes the drawbacks of existing protocols but also accomplishes the needs of roaming users.