Sustainable Framework for Smart Transportation System: A Case Study of Karachi

In this paper, a framework of smart transportation system is proposed, aiming to address the transportation problem in Karachi city. In modern day world, the mega cities and urban areas are on the edge of transformation into smart cities. With the advancement of engineering and technology, smart cities are designed to integrate and utilize these scientific innovations to provide smart solutions and social innovations for sustainable infrastructure, thus they are able to provide its resident highest quality of life by utilizing its resources effectively. One of the major application of smart cities is the Smart Transportation System, which provides safer, quick, environment friendly service to the residents. Thus, this study highlights the current traffic situation of Karachi and propose a framework to transform it into a smart transportation system. In order to have a smart transportation system, it is necessary to have in-depth knowledge and information about the city dynamics and its traffic related issues. Therefore, this study also highlights current traffic situation of Karachi, its road conditions and capacity, vehicles condition, alternate mean of transport (other than road-based system) and its present condition, and finally proposes a framework to develop a smart transportation system while keeping in mind the aforesaid traffic problems.

     

Compact and High Speed Architectures of KASUMI Block Cipher

Wireless Personal Communications - This paper proposes highly compact and high speed hardware architectures of 64-bit KASUMI block cipher for wide range of wireless applications. A novel...     

An effective method for classification with missing values

Classification is one of the most important tasks in machine learning with a huge number of real-life applications. In many practical classification problems, the available information for making object classification is partial or incomplete because some attribute values can be missing due to various reasons. These missing values can significantly affect the efficacy of the classification model. So it is crucial to develop effective techniques to impute these missing values. A number of methods have been introduced for solving classification problem with missing values. However they have various problems. So, we introduce an effective method for imputing missing values using the correlation among the attributes. Other methods which consider correlation for imputing missing values works better either for categorical or numeric data, or designed for a particular application only. Moreover they will not work if all the records have at least one missing attribute. Our method, Model based Missing value Imputation using Correlation (MMIC), can effectively impute both categorical and numeric data. It uses an effective model based technique for filling the missing values attribute wise and reusing then effectively using the model. Extensive performance analyzes show that our proposed approach achieves high performance in imputing missing values and thus increases the efficacy of the classifier. The experimental results also show that our method outperforms various existing methods for handling missing data in classification.     

Preparation and characterization of PPRC/EPDM thermoplastic vulcanizates: A comparative study

Thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPVs) of polypropylene random copolymer (PPRC) with ethylene–propylene diene monomer rubber (EPDM) were prepared through in situ and ex situ compatibilization techniques. Silanized silica as nanofiller was incorporated in the ex situ compatibilized TPVs. Mechanical properties were measured for different formulated TPVs with increasing loading of EPDM from 10 to 30 phr. A comparative data is generated to discuss the effect of two compatibilization techniques and addition of silica filler in the TPVs. The degradation studies were also carried out to check the stability of the blends under harsh ultraviolet environment. The in situ compatibilized TPVs provided better overall mechanical properties. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the properties of ex situ compatiblized TPVs were enhanced by incorporation of silanized silica filler. Silanized silica filler helped in reducing the die swell significantly. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 46726.     

Efficient Resource Management for Cloud-enabled Video Surveillance over Next Generation Network

The next generation video surveillance systems are expected to face challenges in providing computation support for an unprecedented amount of video streams from multiple video cameras in a timely and scalable fashion. Cloud computing offers huge computation resources for large-scale storage and processing on demand, which are deemed suitable for video surveillance tasks. Cloud also provides quality of service guaranteed hardware and software solutions with the virtual machine (VM) technology using a utility-like service costing model. In cloud-based video surveillance context, the resource requests to handle video surveillance tasks are translated in the form of VM resource requests, which in turn are mapped to VM resource allocation referring to physical server resources hosting the VMs. Due to the nature of video surveillance tasks, these requests are highly time-constrained, heterogeneous and dynamic in nature. Hence, it is very challenging to actually manage the cloud resources from the perspective of VM resource allocation given the stringent requirements of video surveillance tasks. This paper proposes a computation model to efficiently manage cloud resources for surveillance tasks allocation. The proposed model works on optimizing the trade-off between average service waiting time and long-term service cost, and shows that long-term service cost is inversely proportional to high and balanced utilization of cloud resources. Experiments show that our approach provides a near-optimal solution for cloud resource management when handling the heterogeneous and unpredictable video surveillance tasks dynamically over next generation network.     

The Carbon-tax debate

This paper discusses recent topics related indirectly to energy production and marketing and related highly to energy policy and economy. These topics are: (1) background to carbon taxes including environmental issues — global warming and CO₂ emissions, fuel substitution and the encouragement of non-hydrocarbon fuel use; (2) climate-change convention and related conferences including those at Rio de Janeiro — objectives and achievements, and Kyoto-objectives; (3) carbon-tax proposals, including implications for oil, coal and gas: (4) The OECD view including evolution of general taxes on hydrocarbons, the carbon tax as a government revenue-raising objective, CO₂ emissions in the OECD; (5) the oil-producer's view including discrimination against oil, the impact on the incentives to use oil and gas; (6) the developing countries' view, including the need to increase fuel use for industrialisation, financial constraints on energy use, and CO₂ emissions in the developing countries.     

Melting heat transfer analysis of electrically conducting nanofluid flow over an exponentially shrinking/stretching porous sheet with radiative heat flux under a magnetic field

Modern magnetic nanomaterial processing operations are progressing rapidly and require increasingly sophisticated mathematical models for their optimization. Stimulated by such developments, in this paper, a theoretical and computational study of a steady magnetohydrodynamic nanofluid over an exponentially stretching/shrinking permeable sheet with melting (phase change) and radiative heat transfer is presented. Besides, wall transpiration, that is, suction and blowing (injection), is included. This study deploys Buongiorno's nanofluid model, which simulates the effects of the Brownian motion and thermophoresis. The transport equations and boundary conditions are normalized via similarity transformations and appropriate variables, and the similarity solutions are shown to depend on the transpiration parameter. The emerging dimensionless nonlinear coupled ordinary differential boundary value problem is solved numerically with the Newton-Fehlberg iteration technique. Validation with special cases from the literature is included. The increase in the magnetic field, that is, the Hartmann number, is observed to elevate nanoparticle concentration and temperature, whereas it dampens the velocity. Higher values of the melting parameter consistently decelerate the boundary layer flow and suppress temperature and nanoparticle concentration. A higher radiative parameter strongly increases temperature (and thermal boundary layer thickness) and weakly accelerates the flow. The increase in the Brownian motion reduces nanoparticle concentrations, whereas a greater thermophoretic body force strongly enhances them. The Nusselt number and Sherwood number are observed to be decreased with an increasing Hartmann number, whereas they are elevated with a stronger wall suction and melting parameter.     

Basics: Current base oil quality and technological options for its improvement— an Overview

Recent technological developments have revolutionised the lubricant industry by spurring a widespread quality improvement in both base oils and additives, giving superior finished lubricants. The upgrading of base oils is being brought about by more demanding requirements from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), by government regulations, and through consumer awareness, environmental concerns, decreasing supply of high‐quality lubricant‐bearing crudes, and expanding markets worldwide. Present‐day lubricant demand is for maximum oxidation stability, superior low‐temperature performance, low volatility, and improved additive response, which are difficult to achieve through conventional processing. Conventional solvent lubricant refining produces base oils with a viscosity index (VI) of 100 with a fair amount of sulphur and aromatics, i.e., Group I base oils only. The current requirements of high‐performance base oils can conveniently be met through the hydroprocessing route. Depending upon the severity level, hydroprocessing is able to produce base oils of VI 95–110, in addition to low sulphur and high saturates content (Group II and Group III) by transforming the undesirable molecules into more useful structures. In countries such as India, a hybrid approach offers a technical solution to meet current demands for lubricant quality. This approach can be implemented in existing lubricant refineries without entailing major changes in refinery configuration, besides being cost‐effective. This paper describes the current requirements of modern lubricants in relation to API Groups and trends in these, and describes a sequence of technologies involving solvent refining, a cost‐effective hybrid scheme, and more recent hydroprocessing that allows a cost‐effective upgrading of Group I refining process. A case study is given that discusses the adoption of the hybrid scheme in Indian refineries.