Synthesis of undoped and Fe nanoparticles doped SnO<Subscript>2</Subscript> nanostructure: study of structural,optical and electrocatalytic properties

In this study, undoped and nano Fe doped SnO₂ nanostructures were synthesized by hydrothermal method. Characterization of the synthesized nanostructures was performed by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. For investigation of optical properties, photo luminescence and UV–Vis spectrum were taken. The electrochemical response of the carbon paste electrode modified with synthesized nanostructures toward levodopa (L-Dopa) was studied. Cyclic voltammetry studies using prepared modified electrodes showed outstanding electrocatalytic properties towards electro-oxidation of L-Dopa and a significant reduction was observed in anodic over voltage compared to the bare electrode. Obtained results indicated the effective role of the employed dopant. Best response in terms of the current enhancement, overvoltage reduction, and reversibility improvement of the L-Dopa oxidation reaction under experimental conditions was obtained by modified electrode with Fe doped SnO₂ nanoparticles.     

Economics of vertical farming in the competitive market

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - The sustainability issues surrounding conventional agriculture motivate the need for exploring new sustainable methods of farming, critical for global...     

Evaluating and Calibrating Reference Evapotranspiration Models Using Water Balance under Hyper-Arid Environment

This research investigates five reference evapotranspiration models (one combined model, one temperature-based model, and three radiation-based models) under hyper-arid environmental conditions at the operational field level. These models were evaluated and calibrated using the weekly water balance of alfalfa by EnviroSCAN to calculate crop evapotranspiration (ET_c). Calibration models were evaluated and validated using wheat and potatoes, respectively, on the basis of weekly water balance. Based on the results and discussion, the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith model proved to be superior in estimating ET_c with a slight underestimation of 2 %. Meanwhile, the Hargreaves-Samani (HS) model (temperature-based) underestimated ET_c by 20 % and the Priestley-Taylor (PT) and Makkink (MK) models (radiation-based) had similar performances underestimating by up to 35 % of the measured ET_c. The Turc (TR) model had the lowest performance compared with other models, demonstrating values underestimated by up to 60 % of the measured ET_c. Local calibration based on alfalfa evapotranspiration measurements was used to rectify these underestimations. The surprisingly good performance of the calibrated simple HS model, with a new coefficient 0.0029, demonstrated its favorable potential to improve irrigation scheduling. The MK and PT models were in third and fourth rank, respectively, reflecting minor differences between one another. The new coefficients obtained for the MK and PT models were 1.99 and 0.963, respectively. One important observation was that the calibrated TR model performed poorly, with an increase in its coefficient from 0.013 to 0.034 to account for hyper-arid environmental conditions; moreover, it required additional seasonal calibration to adequately improve its performance.     

Coupled Quantity-Quality Simulation-Optimization Model for Conjunctive Surface-Groundwater Use

Many water resources optimization problems involve conflicting objectives which the main goal is to find a set of optimal solutions on, or near to, Pareto front. In this study a multi-objective water allocation model was developed for optimization of conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater resources to achieve sustainable supply of agricultural water. Here, the water resource allocation model is based on simulation-optimization (SO) modeling approach. Two surrogate models, namely an Artificial Neural Network model for groundwater level simulation and a Genetic Programming model for TDS concentration prediction were coupled with NSGA-II. The objective functions involved: 1) minimizing water shortage relative to the water demand, 2) minimizing the drawdown of groundwater level, and 3) minimizing the groundwater quality changes. According to the MSE and R² criteria, the results showed that the surrogate models for prediction of groundwater level and TDS concentration performed favorably in comparison to the measured values at the number of observation wells. In Najaf Abad plain case study, the average drawdown was limited to 0.18 m and the average TDS concentration also decreased from 1257 mg/lit to 1229 mg/lit under optimal conditions.     

Thermo-Mechanical Stress in High-Frequency Vacuum Electron Devices

Analysis of the thermo-mechanical performance of high-frequency vacuum electron devices is essential to the advancement of RF sources towards high-power generation. Operation in an ultra-high vacuum environment, space restricting magnetic focusing, and limited material options are just some of the constraints that complicate thermal management in a high-power VED. An analytical method for evaluating temperature, stress, and deformation distribution in thin vacuum-to-cooling walls is presented, accounting for anisotropic material properties. Thin plate geometry is used and analytical expressions are developed for thermo-mechanical analysis that includes the microstructure effects of grain orientations. The method presented evaluates the maximum allowable heat flux that can be used to establish the power-handling limitation of high-frequency VEDs prior to full-scale design, accelerating time-to-manufacture.     

FPGA based fast and high-throughput 2-slow retiming 128-bit AES encryption algorithm

This paper presents a high throughput digital design of the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm based on the 2-slow retiming technique on FPGA. The C-slow retiming is a well-known optimization and high performance technique. It can enhance designs with feedback loops and automatically rebalances the registers in the design. The C-slow retiming can break the critical path of the design into finer pieces to improve the throughput of the design. The complexity of the C-slow retiming on FPGA is to find the best register allocation in the data path of the design so that by increasing the number of registers, relocation of the registers to balance the AES architecture be in the best mode, and the critical path be optimally pipelined and improved. In this paper, architecture of the AES algorithm is implemented in the gate level by high-speed and breakable structures that are desirable for the 2-slow retiming. The Mix-columns transformation is implemented based on multiplication by constants 2 and 3 modules with combinational logic circuits. This work has been successfully verified and synthesized using Xilinx ISE 11 byVirtex-5, XC5VLX85 FPGA. The proposed implementation achieves a high throughput of 86 Gb/s and high maximum operation frequency of 671.524 MHz whereas the highest throughput and the highest operation frequency reported in the literature are 73.737 Gb/s and 576.07 MHz, respectively.     

Uncertainty measures for probabilistic hesitant fuzzy sets in multiple criteria decision making

This contribution reviews critically the existing entropy measures for probabilistic hesitant fuzzy sets (PHFSs), and demonstrates that these entropy measures fail to effectively distinguish a variety of different PHFSs in some cases. In the sequel, we develop a new axiomatic framework of entropy measures for probabilistic hesitant fuzzy elements (PHFEs) by considering two facets of uncertainty associated with PHFEs which are known as fuzziness and nonspecificity. Respect to each kind of uncertainty, a number of formulae are derived to permit flexible selection of PHFE entropy measures. Moreover, based on the proposed PHFE entropy measures, we introduce some entropy-based distance measures which are used in the portion of comparative analysis. Eventually, the proposed PHFE entropy measures and PHFE entropy-based distance measures are applied to decision making in the strategy initiatives where their reliability and effectiveness are verified.     

Geometric design of motions constrained by a contacting surface pair

We discuss the following problem which arises in robot motion planning, NC machining and computer animation: Given are a fixed surface Ψ and N positions Φ_i of a moving surface Φ such that the Φ_i are in point contact with Ψ. Compute a smooth and fair Euclidean gliding motion Φ(t) of the surface Φ on the surface Ψ which interpolates (or approximates) the given positions Φ_i at time instances t_i. First we generalize interpolatory variational subdivision algorithms for curves to curves on surfaces. Second we study an unconstraint motion design algorithm which we then extend to the main contribution of this paper, an algorithm for the design of a motion constraint by a contacting surface pair. Both motion design algorithms use a feature point representation of the moving surface, subdivision algorithms for curves, instantaneous kinematics, and ideas from line geometry. Geometric methods are used for the numerical solution of the arising optimization problems.     

Position Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the Mobile Ad Hoc Network

This paper considers the problem of employing multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) as relay backbone nodes to construct the backbone network, to improve the network connectivity, and to address many issues in the MANET such as linkage, capacity, load balance, and reliability. With considering the dynamic nature of the problem, this study provides several linear location problem models and their extensions to accommodate these issues. Due to the size of linear location models associated with a large number of constraints, the problem becomes computational challenging even with modest size of nodes. To overcome the computational barrier, we recast these location problem models using a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) framework and solve these QUBO models with a Tabu search heuristic with preprocessing. The analysis of the solutions that are produced by QUBO together with the comparisons made with the linear model highlight both the attractiveness and robustness of the proposed approach. The results of this study provide support to future advanced routing protocol development.