Optimal Water Resources Management: Case of Lower Litani River, Lebanon

The pressures of human population and patterns of development frequently jeopardize the integrity of river systems worldwide. An integrated approach to water resources management is essential, particularly in developing countries. This study presents the results of the water resources optimization conducted for the Lower Litani River Basin in Lebanon. The overall aim of the project is to develop, test, and critically evaluate an innovative approach to water resources management in the Mediterranean region. The method explores the ways in which multiple environmental, economic, and social benefits can be achieved through integrated management of water resources. The Water Resources Model was utilized to assess the efficiency of the baseline model scenario and for the optimization process of the different scenarios of the Litani Lower Basin. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis was applied in order to derive the objectives and constraints. Results revealed that the potential retained scenarios aim at decreasing water consumption and demand, losses, and return flow. These scenarios mainly include the shift to drip irrigation, awareness campaigns, and losses control in domestic supply pipes. Other retained scenarios having a higher shortfall rely on the use of the Channel concrete lining to decrease losses and return flow, in addition to the awareness campaigns in both domestic and irrigation sectors, and less consumptive/more efficient irrigation methods such as sprinkler and drip irrigation at variable application percentages. Hence, most of the interventions or measures proposed are generally not costly and can be implemented.     

An extended KCF tracking algorithm based on TLD structure in low frame rate videos

The KCF (Kernelized Correlation Filter) algorithm achieved a good performance on target tracking challenges. However, it still has some defects and problems of false tracking in low frame rate (LFR) scenarios, target scale variation, occlusion and out of view target, that exists in the correlation filter based methods. In this paper, we overcome the shortcomings of KCF tracking algorithm based on Tracking-Learning-Detection (TLD) framework. The proposed algorithm trained two classifiers simultaneously, based on semi supervised co-training learning algorithm. Then, we comparatively evaluate the proposed method on TB-100 datasets by other trackers. The experimental results demonstrate that the precision and robustness of the improved tracking algorithm is higher than traditional KCF, TLD and the other top state-of-the-art tracking algorithms in LFR videos.

     

Design techniques for reducing the impact of component variations on narrow-band low noise amplifiers

Given the increasing demand for integrated wireless systems in system-on-chip technology, narrow-band low noise amplifier (LNA) designs must be robust against variations in device parameters and passive component values to improve manufacturing yield for high volume applications. In this paper, we develop two design techniques for reducing the impact of component variations on narrow-band LNA performance. The results demonstrate that by increasing the bandwidth of the narrow-band LNA and applying more conservative design constraints, we can mitigate the reliability implications of process variations on impedance matching, gain, and power consumption.     

Designing soft-edge flip-flop-based linear pipelines operating in multiple supply voltage regimes

Soft-edge flip-flop (SEFF) based pipelines can improve the performance and energy efficiency of circuits operating in the super-threshold (supply voltage) regime by enabling the opportunistic time borrowing. The application of this technique to the near-threshold regime of operation, however, faces a significant challenge due to large circuit parameter variations that result from manufacturing process imperfections. In particular, delay lines in SEFFs have to be over-designed to provide larger transparency windows to overcome the variation in path delays, which causes them to consume more power. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel way of designing delay lines in SEFFs to have a large enough transparency window size and low power consumption. Two types of linear pipeline design problems using the SEFFs are formulated and solved: (1) designing energy-delay optimal pipelines for the general usage that requires SEFFs to operate in both the near-threshold and super-threshold regimes, and (2) designing minimum energy consumed pipelines for particular use case with a minimum operating frequency constraint. Design methods are presented to derive requisite pipeline design parameters (i.e., depth and sizing of delay lines in SEFFs) and operating conditions (i.e., supply voltage and operating frequency of the design) in presence of process-induced variations. HSPICE simulation results using ISCAS benchmarks demonstrate the efficacy of the presented design methods.     

On the necessary and sufficient requirement of a CIOQ switch to emulate an Output Queued switch

There has been much interest to emulate the behavior of Output Queued switches. The early result of such attempts was reported by Prabhakar and McKeown using the CIOQ switches with speedup factor of 4. Subsequently, Stoica and Zhang and independently Chuang et al. showed that a speedup of 2 in conjunction with their scheduling schemes would be sufficient for CIOQ switches to emulate Output Queued switches.Additionally, Chuang et al. showed that in “Average Sense” a speedup of 2?1/N is necessary and sufficient for CIOQ to emulate Output Queued switch behavior.Our paper reports that in the “Strict Sense” a speedup of 2 is both necessary and sufficient. We show this requirement using examples for 2x2 and 3x3 switches. Then, with a constructed traffic pattern, it is proved that in the “Strict Sense” a speedup of 2 is necessary to emulate the behavior of an Output Queued switch for any switch size N.Combining this result with the previous scheduling schemes, we conclude that in the “Strict Sense”, a speedup of 2 is the necessary and sufficient condition to emulate the behavior of an Output Queued switch, using a CIOQ switch.Additionally, easing the assumptions and allowing the packet segmentation, it is shown that the speedup requirement to emulate the behavior of an Output Queued switch can be reduced to values even smaller than 2?1/N. For this case a lower bound of 3/2 and an upper bound of 2 is proved.     

Effect of sand and clay fouling on the shear strength of railway ballast for different ballast gradations

Ballast contamination by fine materials such as sand and clay in railway track at arid regions is an important issue that causes track instability problems and settlement due to reduction of shear strength of ballast. In this paper, the results of direct shear box test conducted on clean ballast, sand-fouled ballast and clay-fouled ballast for different ballast gradations are reported and discussed. For this purpose, three different fouling amounts according to fouling index are added to clean ballast. Test results show that by increasing the fouling percentage, the ballast shear strength always decreases both for sand and clay fouled ballast. However, the amount of shear strength reduction is low at high normal stresses. Clay contamination has more adverse effect on the shear strength of ballast compared with sand contamination. Also, the results of tests for evaluation of gradation effect on shear strength of fouled ballast which are conducted on various gradations according to American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association, show that the maximum particle size as well as uniformity coefficient affect the shear strength of ballast. Also, an empirical equation is presented to observe the effect of ballast gradation on reduction of shear strength with regard to amount of fouling material and normal stress.     

Investigating optical,electrical, and mechanical traits of thiourea admixtured KDP single crystals to explore NLO device applications

The 0.5 and 1 mol% thiourea “mixed” potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals have been developed by conventional slow solution evaporation method. The crystallographic parameters of grown crystals have been determined by employing single crystal X-ray diffraction technique. The functional groups of grown crystals were successfully identified by means of FTIR spectral analysis. The optical transmittance is 79%, 84%, and 89% for KDP, 0.5 mol thiourea mixed KDP, and 1 mol thiourea mixed KDP crystal. The energy band gap (E_g) of KDP, 0.5 mol thiourea mixed KDP, and 1 mol thiourea mixed KDP crystal is 3.71 eV, 3.61 eV, and 3.75 eV, respectively. The Kurtz–Perry test has been employed to determine the SHG efficiency and SHG efficiency of 0.5 and 1 mol thiourea mixed KDP crystal is 2.09 and 2.22 times superior to KDP crystal. Effect of thiourea mixing on hardness properties of KDP crystal have been scrutinized using the Vickers microhardness studies. The frequency dependent dielectric behavior of grown crystals has been analyzed at room temperature.

     

Genetic-based random key generator (GRKG): a new method for generating more-random keys for one-time pad cryptosystem

In this paper, a new algorithm for generating more-randomized keys for symmetrical cipher one-time pad (OTP) according to the linear congruential (LCG) method based on the idea of genetic algorithm is proposed. The method, genetic-based random key generator, is proposed for generating keys for the OTP method with a high degree of key randomness; this adds more strength to the OTP method against breaking this cryptosystem. This algorithm is composed of two parts. Initially, the first population is being generated by LCG method, and then, genetic operators for generating the next populations are being used. Generating random keys with the presented method requires seven-parameter key that increases the security of communication between the transceivers.     

Threshold quantum secret sharing between multiparty and multiparty using Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger state

We propose a (t, m)?(s, n) threshold quantum secret sharing protocol between multiparty (m members in group 1) and multiparty (n members in group 2) using a sequence of Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states, which is useful and efficient when the parties of communication are not all present. In the protocol, Alice prepares a sequence of GHZ states in one of the eight different states and sends the last two particles to the first agent while other members encode their information on the sequence via unitary transformations. Finally the last member in group 2 measures the qubits. It is shown that this scheme is safe.