Analysis of Sun Flower Shaped Monopole Antenna

Wireless Personal Communications - The theoretical analysis of nature inspired antenna along with measured results of fabricated prototype is presented in this work. The space between successive...     

Impact assessment of electric vehicle charging/discharging strategies on the operation management of grid accessible and remote microgrids

This article deals with impact analysis of different electric vehicle (EV) charging/discharging strategies (CDS) on the operation and pollutant treatment cost of both grid accessible and remote microgrid (MG) modes. In this regard, EV demand is developed under four different scenarios, namely, uncoordinated charging model (UCM), load leveling model (LLM), maximum renewable model (MRM), and charging discharging model (CDM). A comprehensive study is performed to see the effect of these different EV charging/discharging behaviors in optimizing MG's operation. A 2m scheme of Hong's point estimate method (PEM) is applied to examine the effect of uncertainties linked with the forecasted errors in load demand, solar energy, wind energy, and grid price respectively on MG operation problem. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effect of variations in battery parameters on economics of remote MG. The study results indicate that controlled charging of EVs can substantially improve operation of MG.     

Discriminate,locate and mitigate DDoS traffic in presence of Flash Crowd in Software Defined Network

The Journal of Supercomputing - Discrimination of Flash crowd and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) traffic has been addressed already in legacy network and Software Defined Network (SDN), and...     

Structural origin of the anomalous density maximum in silica and alkali silicate glasses

Silica, sharing the same tetrahedral order and many structural, thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies with water, has been speculated to have a density increase upon melting similar to water. In this work, an increase in density upon melting cristobalite silica and a shallow density maximum followed by a density minimum during cooling of silica liquid are observed in classical molecular dynamics simulations. The density maximum gradually diminishes with the increase in alkali size/content in alkali silicate glasses. The structural origin of the anomalous density maximum in silica is revealed by detailed structural analysis. During the cooling process, a range of rings with different sizes form in liquid silica, with 6-member rings being the most dominant, which cause the silica network to open up and compensate the regular volume shrinkage upon cooling. These two competing factors lead to a density maximum, but to a less extent than that observed in melting of cristobalite silica. With the increase in modifier size/content in the alkali silicate glasses, the connectivity of silica network gradually breaks down; the population of 6-member rings decrease with the increase in smaller or larger rings, therefore the density maximum becomes less obvious and eventually disappears.     

Next-generation cybersecurity through a blockchain-enabled federated cloud framework

Minimizing the breach detection gap (BDG) for cyber-attacks is a big concern for all organizations and governments. Cyber-attacks are discovered daily, many of which have gone undetected for days to years before the victim organizations detect and deploy the cyber defense. Cyber defense solutions are advancing to combat risks and attacks from traditional to next-generation advanced defense protection solutions. However, many individuals, organizations and businesses continue to be hit by new waves of global cyber-attacks. In this paper, we present a blockchain-enabled federated cloud computing framework that uses the Dempster–Shafer theory to reduce BDG by continuously monitoring and analyzing the network traffics against cyber-attacks. We evaluate the proposed approach using numerical results, and the proposed approach outperforms the traditional approaches.     

A systematic analysis using classification machine learning algorithms to understand why learners drop out of MOOCs

Neural Computing and Applications - The increasing popularity of massively online open courses (MOOCs) has been attracting a lot of learners. Despite the popularity, it has been observed that there...     

Soft computing approaches for image segmentation: a survey

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Image segmentation is the method of partitioning an image into a group of pixels that are homogenous in some manner. The homogeneity dependents on some...     

Biotechnological potential of microbial inulinases: Recent perspective

Among microbial enzymes, inulinases or fructo-furanosylhydrolases have received considerable attention in the past decade, and as a result, a variety of applications based on enzymatic hydrolysis of inulin have been documented. Inulinases are employed for generation of fructose and inulo-oligosaccharides (IOS) in a single-step reaction with specificity. The high fructose syrup can be biotransformed into value-added products such as ethanol, single cell protein, while IOS are indicated in nutraceutical industry as prebiotic. Myriad microorganisms produce inulinases, and a number of exo- and endo-inulinases have been characterized and expressed in heterologous hosts. Initially, predominated by Aspergilli, Penicillia, and some yeasts (Kluyveromyces spp.), the list of prominent inulinase producers has gradually expanded and now includes extremophilic prokaryotes and marine-derived microorganisms producing robust inulinases. The present paper summarizes important developments about microbial inulinases and their applications made in the last decade.