Influence of physico-chemical treatment on the subsequent biological process treating paper industry wastewater

The present paper presents the main results of the biodegradation study of paper industry wastewater through physico-chemical treatment. Indeed, around 60% of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal can be achieved by electroflocculation treatment. Furthermore, a removal efficiency of the COD of almost 91% has been obtained by biological treatment, with activated amount of sludge for 24 h of culture. Concerning the physico-chemical pre-treatment of the untreated, filtered and electroflocculated rejection effluents, it has been investigated through the degradation curve of COD studies.     

Smart Parking Reservation System Based on Distributed Multicriteria Approach

In metropolitan area, finding a parking space is a difficult task for drivers especially in rush hours. This causes waste of time and fuel and results in traffic congestion. We propose a smart parking system based on multi-agent approach to provide a real-time decision-aid for drivers by handling their preferences. The system ensures an online space allocation based on real-time information by optimizing drivers’ preferences with respect to operational constraints. The online allocation problem is considered as a multicriteria decision-aid problem for which we present a mathematical formulation: multicriteria parking reservation problem. The solution is an optimal compromise from the set of efficient solutions which is determined by means of a multicriteria ranking method ELECTRE III. An update of resource allocation is performed to avoid reservation conflict and to ensure constraints satisfaction. After the reservation process, the driver is assisted via a guidance module to reach the reserved place through the shortest path. Simulation results show the wide applicability of the approach in real cases.     

A DISTRIBUTED MULTI-CRITERIA APPROACH FOR TRAFFIC REGULATION IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS

Given the dynamic character of public transportation systems, it is difficult to respect accurately theoretical timetables. In real conditions, many disturbances may occur in transportation networks and cause troubles in vehicle schedules. In order to keep transportation systems as stable as possible, a real-time traffic regulation has to be performed by optimizing some regulation criteria that represent exploitation objectives. In this article, we deal with the regulation problem as a multi-criteria optimization one for which we propose a nonaggregative approach based on multi-agent systems. For a given disturbance, the approach firstly ensures an anytime generation of Pareto solutions set by using a distributed Tabu search. Then, the best compromise solution is determined through a multi-criteria evaluation process. Therefore, two multi-criteria evaluation procedures are also suggested: Plurality voting procedure and fuzzy-based procedure. In order to assess the distributed approach, an experimental study was performed on the base of real scenarios.     

Soil moisture retrieval over agricultural fields from multi-polarized and multi-angular RADARSAT-2 SAR data

The aim of this study was to estimate soil moisture from RADARSAT-2 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images acquired over agricultural fields. The adopted approach is based on the combination of semi-empirical backscattering models, four RADARSAT-2 images and coincident ground measurements (soil moisture, soil surface roughness and vegetation characteristics) obtained near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada during the summer of 2008. The depolarization ratio (χ_v), the co-polarized correlation coefficient (ρ_vvhh) and the ratio of the absolute value of cross polarization to crop height (Λ_vh) derived from RADARSAT-2 data were analyzed with respect to changes in soil surface roughness, crop height, soil moisture and vegetation water content. This sensitivity analysis allowed us to develop empirical relationships for soil surface roughness, crop height and crop water content estimation regardless of crop type. The latter were then used to correct the semi-empirical Water-Cloud model for soil surface roughness and vegetation effects in order to retrieve soil moisture data. The soil moisture retrieved algorithm is evaluated over mature crop fields (wheat, pea, lentil, and canola) using ground measurements. Results show average relative errors of 19%, 10%, 25.5% and 32% respectively for the retrieval of crop height, soil surface roughness, crop water content and soil moisture.     

The contact problem of a rigid stamp with friction on a functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic half-plane

We consider in this study the frictional sliding contact problem between a functionally graded magneto-electro-elastic material and a perfectly conducting rigid punch subjected to magneto-electro-mechanical loads. The problem is formulated under plane strain conditions. Using Fourier transform, the resulting plane magneto-electro-elasticity equations are converted analytically into three coupled singular integral equations in which the unknowns are the normal contact stress, the electric displacement and the magnetic induction. These integral equations are then solved numerically to obtain the distributions of the normal contact stress, electric displacement and magnetic induction at the surface of the graded medium. The main objective of this paper is to study the effect of the non-homogeneity parameter, the friction coefficient and the elastic, electric and magnetic coefficients on the surface contact pressure, electric displacement and magnetic induction distributions for the case of flat and circular punch profiles.     

Human platelet antigens polymorphisms and susceptibility of thrombosis in hemodialysis patients

To investigate the association between the polymorphisms of human platelet antigen (HPA)-1,2,3,4,5 and susceptibility to develop thrombosis accident in arteriovenous fistula (AVF), genomic DNA of 112 hemodialysis (HD) patients and 100 healthy blood donors were genotyped by PCR-SSP. The patients were classified into 2 groups: G1 included 54 HD patients presented at least one thrombotic episode on the level of the AVF, and G2 included 58 HD patients without any episode of thrombosis. The allelic frequencies of HPA-1, 2, 3, and 5 among patients and controls did not reveal significant differences. However, the HPA-4b allele was significantly more frequent in G1 than in controls or in G2 patients (23.1% vs. 11.5% and 0.9%, respectively), p<0.01 and p<0.001. The genotype distribution of HPA-4 polymorphism reveals that the HPA-4a4b genotype was more frequent in G1 patients (23/54: 42.6%) than in all HD patients (25/112: 22.3%) or in G2 patients (1/58: 1.72%) (p<0.001, odds ratio: 45.6). Among 24 HD patients with HPA-4a4b genotype, 23 (96%) developed at least 1 or more thrombotic episode on the level of their AVF. However, 30 patients (34.5%) among 87 HD patients with HPA-4a4a genotype presented thrombotic episode (p<0.001). These results reveal a significant association between HPA-4a4b and thrombosis, and it is likely that HPA polymorphisms could be useful markers for potential risk of thrombosis in hemodialysis.     

2.5/3D dynamically stretchable and permanently shaped electronic circuits

Microsystem Technologies - Conventional electronic circuits are made up of electronic components assembled on either rigid substrates like FR4 and ceramic or on flexible substrates based on...     

Coding graphene metasurface modeling using MoM‐GEC method for dynamic diffusion and scattering control at Terahertz range

In this article, we present an electromagnetic study of electrically programmable graphene‐based metasurface with individual scattering control. Our investigation is based on the method of moments combined with the generalized equivalent circuit (MoM‐GEC) approach. We show that, tuning the unit cell's conductivity leads to change its input impedance and scattering matrix. So, each unit cell of the metasurface exhibits' a dynamic phase response that can be switched between 0° and ?180° by controlling high transmission and total reflection states. Based on this feature, a 1‐bit coding metasurface consisting of discrete codes of “0” and “1” is used to synthesis 3D beams. Hence, tailorable anomalous reflection and diffusion are studied under normal incidence at a fixed frequency of 3.9 THz. This survey opens new opportunities in the domain of Terahertz beam engineering and security scanner applications.     

Design and analysis of secure host-based mobility protocol for wireless heterogeneous networks

Mobility protocols allow hosts to change their location or network interface while maintaining ongoing sessions. While such protocols can facilitate vertical mobility in a cost-efficient and access agnostic manner, they are not sufficient to address all security issues when used in scenarios requiring local mobility management. In this paper, we propose a new scheme that makes Host Identity Protocol (HIP) able to serve as an efficient and secure mobility protocol for wireless heterogeneous networks while preserving all the advantages of the base HIP functions as well. Our proposal, called Heterogeneous Mobility HIP (HMHIP), is based on hierarchical topology of rendezvous Servers (RVSs), signaling delegation, and inter-RVS communication to enable secure and efficient network mobility support in the HIP layer. Formal security analysis using the AVISPA tool and performance evaluation of this method are provided; they confirm the safety and efficiency of the proposed solution. HMHIP reduces handover latency and packet overhead during handovers by achieving registration locally.     

A Dynamic Adaptation Mechanism for Traffic Conditions in Wireless Sensor Network

As overall network traffic pursue to expand, a lot of low-power medium access control protocols have been proposed to deal with burst traffic in wireless sensor network. Although most of them provide low throughput but do not well optimize the energy consumption. In this paper, we propose a new hybrid carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol that arranges nodes into two categories of priority according to their traffic rate and data transmission delay. Nodes that have continuous data should send its data during the contention free period, those one will be classified as low priority and its data will be scheduling using TDMA. Others nodes who have a random data should transmit it immediately during the contention access period (CAP) using a fuzzy logic algorithm, based on their queue length and implemented in the CSMA/CA algorithm. Therefore, the proposed scheme dynamically changes the CAP length to ensure that nodes can complete its transaction during the same super-frame. Simulation results are done using the network simulator tools (NS-2) and have improved good efficiency regarding the IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The mechanism has improved the energy consumption, minimised the packet loss probability, increased the throughput variation in the network and also minimised the average end to end delay.