Calculating Price Elasticity of Water Demand Using Gene Expression Programming Based on Economic,Social and Meteorological Variables

Determining the changing rate of water consumption through altering parameters such as water tariffs can help water companies select appropriate water policies. This paper is intended to find the proper relation between the water price elasticity of demand and some social, economic and climatic variables that are released annually by international organizations like the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank. By using genetic algorithm, different combinations of water price elasticity of demand and variables like gross domestic product, per capita gross domestic product, gross national income, precipitation, human development index, average temperature and household size have been analyzed. It was found that the absolute price elasticity of water demand has positive relationships with precipitation and price of water. It has also been found that the gross national income, average percent of consumers who have secondary education and human development index have a negative relation with the absolute price elasticity of water demand.

     

High-speed full adder based on minority function and bridge style for nanoscale

In this paper a new high-speed and high-performance Full Adder cell, which is implemented based on CMOS bridge style and minority function, is proposed. Several simulations conducted at nanoscale using different power supplies, load capacitors, frequencies and temperatures demonstrate the superiority of the proposed design in terms of delay and power-delay product (PDP) compared to the other cells. In addition the proposed structure improves the robustness and reduces sensitivity to the process variations of the other Bridge-Cap Full Adder cell already presented in the literature.     

Speciation of heavy metals by modified BCR sequential extraction procedure in different depths of sediments from Sungai Buloh, Selangor, Malaysia

The sequential extraction procedure proposed by the European Standard, Measurements and Testing (SM&T) program, formerly the Community Bureau of Reference (BCR), was applied for partitioning of heavy metals (HMs) in river sediments collected along the course of Sungai Buloh and the Straits of Malacca in Selangor, Malaysia. Eight elements (V, Pb, Cd, Cr, Co, Ni, Cu and Zn) from seven stations (S1-S7) and at different depths were analyzed using the modified BCR Sequential Extraction Procedure (SEP) in combination with ICP-MS to obtain the metal distribution patterns in this region. The results showed that heavy metal contaminations at S2 and S3 was more severe than at other sampling sites, especially for Zn, Cu, Ni and Pb. Nevertheless, the element concentrations from top to bottom layers decreased predominantly. The samples from the Straits of Malacca (S4-S7) the highest contamination factors obtained were for Co, Zn and Pb while the lowest were found for V and Cr, similar to Sungai Buloh sediments. The sediments showed a low risk for V, Cr, Cu and Pb with RAC values of less than 10%, but medium risk for Co, Zn (except S3), Cd at S1 and S2 and Ni at S1, S3 and S5. Zn at S3 and Cd at S3-S7 showed high risk to our sediment samples. There is not any element of very high risk conditions in the selected samples.     

Energy efficient hybrid full adder design for digital signal processing in nanoelectronics

Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing - In recent years, there has been a growing interest in energy efficient VLSI designs for portable devices. Full adder cell is one of the most...     

Novel single-trit comparator circuits in ternary quantum-dot cellular automata

Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing - Today, with the continuation of the reduction of the dimensions of transistors, the thickness of the gate is so small that it causes the leakage...     

Design of testable reversible latches by using a novel efficient implementation of Fredkin gate

ABSTRACT

Energy dissipation caused by information loss in irreversible computations will be an important limitation for the development of nano-scale circuits in the near future. Reductions in energy dissipation comprise one of the important goals of nanotechnology-based methods, including Quantum dot Cellular Automata (QCA), and so it is desirable to consider reversibility in the design of QCA circuits. In this research, a novel reversible Fredkin gate based on QCA is proposed, which is more efficient and less complex than the conventional Fredkin gate. Conservative reversible logic is parity preserving; hence, any permanent or transient fault can be caused a mismatch between the inputs and the outputs and can be concurrently detected if a reversible circuit is implemented with the conservative Fredkin gate. A single missing/additional cell defect is investigated in the proposed Fredkin gate and fault patterns are presented. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed design, some testable reversible sequential elements, such as D-latch, JK-latch, T-latch and SR-latch, are designed by using it. Our proposed concurrent testable designs greatly reduce the occupied area and maximise the circuit density in comparison with previously reported designs. The proposed designs are simulated and verified using QCA Designer ver.2.0.3 and HDLQ.     

Design and analysis of efficient QCA reversible adders

The Journal of Supercomputing - Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) as an emerging nanotechnology are envisioned to overcome the scaling and the heat dissipation issues of the current CMOS...     

The effect of nanoparticles on oil sludge biodegradation by Chromohalobacter sp. isolated from the Bahregan area in the Persian Gulf

In this study, sampling was performed from oil-sludge-contaminated site from Bahregan area in the Persian Gulf of Iran. Alkane-degrading bacteria from oil sludge were isolated by chemotaxis in hydroxylase gene. Thus, Chromohalobacter strain was selected as useful strain for the biodegradation of oil sludge. The biodegradation of oil sludge by Chromohalobacter in the absence and presence of nanoparticles in light and dark conditions was investigated by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis. Results of analysis showed that although Chromohalobacter is capable of the biodegradation of oil sludge, Fe₂O₃ and Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles with this bacterium increase the biodegradation in a short time.     

Vibration of double-walled carbon nanotubes coupled by temperature-dependent medium under a moving nanoparticle with multi physical fields

A numerical model on nonlinear vibration of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) subjected to a moving nanoparticle and multi physical fields is proposed. DWCNTs are considered with the kinematic assumption of Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. The surrounding elastic substrate is simulated as Pasternak foundation, which is assumed to be temperature-dependent. Hamilton's principle, incremental harmonic balanced method, Galerkin, and time integration method with direct iteration are employed to establish the equations of motion of zigzag DWCNTs. The study reveals that for the weak van der Waals forces, DWCNTs have the positive and the negative deflections as if it vibrates under a moving nanoparticle.