Multi-metric geographic routing for vehicular ad hoc networks

Wireless Networks - Maintaining durable connectivity during data forwarding in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks has witnessed significant attention in the past few decades with the aim of supporting most...     

The post-glacial history of northern Lake of the Woods: A multi-proxy perspective on climate variability and lake ontogeny

Lake of the Woods (LOW) is a large, morphologically and hydrologically complex lake of international importance, located in the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and the state of Minnesota. A high-resolution sedimentary sequence retrieved near Kenora, Ontario, and spanning at least the past ~11,000?cal?yr?BP (calibrated years before present), was analysed for multiple environmental proxies with an emphasis on diatom assemblage composition and spectrally-inferred chlorophyll a. These biological proxies indicate that northern LOW was relatively nutrient-rich soon after its isolation from glacial Lake Agassiz ~10,000?cal?yr?BP. The post-glacial hydrological and environmental history of LOW was found to be controlled by both climate and isostatic rebound. During the low water phase of the mid-Holocene dry and warm period, abrupt and synchronous shifts across all proxies suggest that the northern basin had a relatively deep and well-mixed water column that experienced increases in nutrients and whole-lake algal production. This differs from recent limnological changes associated with warming since the late-1970s, where primary production increased concurrently with large shifts in diatoms indicative of increased thermal stability, but with little change in nutrients. The millennial-scale context of this study provides evidence that climate has long played an important role in algal dynamics in LOW, with implications for lake management strategies concerning recent increases in nuisance algal blooms on LOW.     

Viscometric and Volumetric Properties of 10 Regular Binary Systems at 308.15 K and 313.15 K

The densities and kinematic viscosities of 10 binary subsystems of the regular quinary system, benzene (1) + toluene (2) + ethylbenzene (3) + heptane (4) + cyclooctane (5), were measured at 308.15 K and 313.15 K over the entire composition range. The viscosity-composition data reported herein were utilized to examine the predictive capability of some viscosity models, namely, the predictive version of the McAllister model, a group contribution method (GC-UNIMOD), a generalized corresponding states principle (GCSP), and the Allan and Teja correlation. The results of testing showed that the McAllister model outperformed all other models except for systems containing cyclooctane. The results also showed an overall average absolute deviation (%AAD) of 1.25% for systems that did not contain cyclooctane.     

A Novel Optimized Language-Independent Text Summarization Technique

A substantial amount of textual data is present electronically in several languages. These texts directed the gear to information redundancy. It is essential to remove this redundancy and decrease the reading time of these data. Therefore, we need a computerized text summarization technique to extract relevant information from group of text documents with correlated subjects. This paper proposes a language-independent extractive summarization technique. The proposed technique presents a clustering-based optimization technique. The clustering technique determines the main subjects of the text, while the proposed optimization technique minimizes redundancy, and maximizes significance. Experiments are devised and evaluated using BillSum dataset for the English language, MLSUM for German and Russian and Mawdoo3 for the Arabic language. The experiments are evaluated using ROUGE metrics. The results showed the effectiveness of the proposed technique compared to other language-dependent and language-independent summarization techniques. Our technique achieved better ROUGE metrics for all the utilized datasets. The technique accomplished an F-measure of 41.9% for Rouge-1, 18.7% for Rouge-2, 39.4% for Rouge-3, and 16.8% for Rouge-4 on average for all the dataset using all three objectives. Our system also exhibited an improvement of 26.6%, 35.5%, 34.65%, and 31.54% w.r.t. The recent model contributed in the summarization of BillSum in terms of ROUGE metric evaluation. Our model’s performance is higher than the compared models, especially in the metric results of ROUGE_2 which is bi-gram matching.     

Expanding Participation in Undergraduate Research Using the Affinity Group Model*

The benefits of working in a research group are clear: students develop domain expertise, gain an understanding and appreciation of the research process and its practice, and acquire team, communication, problem-solving, and higher-level thinking skills. Students with this experience are better equipped to make informed judgements about technical matters and to communicate and work in teams to solve complex problems. Clearly, this type of research experience must be made available to a broader population. This paper discusses how the Systems and Software Engineering Affinity Research Group model provides a socialization mechanism and infrastructure that supports the development and management of large research groups that engage undergraduate and graduate students, who have a wide range of skill levels and experiences, in research and projects. This non-hierarchical model, which is based on the cooperative paradigm, integrates students into small research groups and an encompassing large research group, and uses structured activities to develop their research, technical, communication, and group skills.     

A Neo-institutionalist Model of the Diffusion of IFRS Accounting Standards

The purpose of this study is to prepare a diffusion model of the new international accounting standards known as the international financial reporting standards (IFRS). This model fits within the neo-institutional conceptual framework; more specifically, we used the DiMaggio/Powell analytical grid. Our desire to prepare this model was born from the observation that the analytical framework that is generally used to study the adoption of these new standards is the neo-institutional framework and that the principal methodologies implemented are qualitative. The question addressed in this study regards the forces leading an agent—in this case, an organisation providing standards for accounting—to adopt, at a given moment, these new standards. Existing studies, as interesting as they might be, are devoted to the question of adoption and leave aside the question of diffusion. In other words, the evolution of the system as a whole in time is ignored. Constructing a model appeared to us to be a way to move beyond these limitations. This model allows us to formalise the forces at work in the DiMaggio/Powell representation and to simulate the diffusion processes of the IFRS. To this end, we implement a multi-agent simulation. The various simulation scenarios are then compared to the observed diffusion of the IFRS.     

ROBUST FITTING OF INARCH MODELS

We discuss robust M‐estimation of INARCH models for count time series. These models assume the observation at each point in time to follow a Poisson distribution conditionally on the past, with the conditional mean being a linear function of previous observations. This simple linear structure allows us to transfer M‐estimators for autoregressive models to this situation, with some simplifications being possible because the conditional variance given the past equals the conditional mean. We investigate the performance of the resulting generalized M‐estimators using simulations. The usefulness of the proposed methods is illustrated by real data examples.     

The impact of changing solar screen rotation angle and its opening aspect ratios on Daylight Availability in residential desert buildings

In desert sunny clear-sky regions solar penetration can become excessive. This can cause non-uniform daylight distribution, glare and high solar heat gain, affecting both visual and thermal comfort. Shading devices, such as solar screens, were usually used to diffuse and prevent direct solar penetration into spaces. This paper investigates the impact of changing solar screen axial rotation angle and screen opening aspect ratio on daylighting performance in a typical residential living room space under the desert sunny clear-sky. The larger aim is to arrive at efficient solar screen designs that suit the different orientations.The study was divided into three consecutive phases. In phase one, the effect of the two parameters on Daylight Availability was tested. The solar screen was axially rotated by three different angles at 10° increments. Also, the aspect ratio of the screen opening in both horizontal and vertical directions was changed systematically. Simulation was conducted using the annual Daylight Dynamic Performance Metrics (DDPMs). In phase two, the Annual Daylight Glare Probability (DGP) metric was evaluated for the cases that were found adequate in phase one. In the third phase, the annual solar energy transmittance through the screen was calculated for the cases that achieved acceptable performance in the two previous phases in order to identify the more energy efficient screens.Solar screens with openings having horizontal aspect ratios were found to be the most effective, while those with vertical aspect ratios were achieved the lowest performance. In the North orientation, since almost all the cases that were tested in this research provided acceptable daylighting performance, the designer now have a variety of options to choose from. Preference should be given to screen openings of horizontal aspect ratios, especially the 12:1 and 18:1 (H:V) screens that achieved the best performance where 92% of the space was “daylit” in comparison with only 53% of the base case. In the East orientation, it is advisable to use the 12:1 (H:V) screen opening ratio, as it was found acceptable in the two daylighting testing phases and achieved the best performance in regards to annual transmittance of solar radiation. For the South orientation, there were also many acceptable choices. However, the 3:1 screen aspect ratio is recommended as it assists in saving energy by reducing the annual transmitted solar radiation (60% reduction) while achieving acceptable daylighting performance.