Assessment of Upstream Human Intervention Coupled with Climate Change Impact for a Transboundary River Flow Regime: Nile River Basin

Water Resources Management - The aim of this article is to determine how human interventions in upstream countries coupled with drought events are affecting the flow regime of downstream countries...     

Impact of upstream anthropogenic river regulation on downstream water availability in transboundary river watersheds

This article assesses the adverse impact of upstream anthropogenic regulation of a transboundary river watershed on the natural flow regime of the downstream country, by focusing on a case study: the Diyala (Sīrvān) River watershed shared between Iraq and Iran. The article explores transboundary watershed management difficulties in a three-level system called the transboundary three-scalar framework, which helps to sustainably manage water resources. The average rates of reduction in flow between 2004 and 2013 ranged from nearly 24% in February to about 77% in September. The median of the reduction of rates between June and October was 66.4%.     

Variation in Fatty Acid Compositions, Oil Content and Oil Yield in a Germplasm Collection of Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.)

The variation in oil content, oil yield and fatty acid compositions of 103 sesame landraces was investigated. The landraces varied widely in their oil quantity and quality. The oil content varied between 41.3 and 62.7%, the average being 53.3%. The percentage content of linoleic, oleic, palmitic and stearic acids in the seed oil ranged between 40.7–49.3, 29.3–41.4, 8.0–10.3 and 2.1–4.8%, respectively. Linolenic and arachidic acids were the minor constituents of the sesame oil. Linoleic and oleic acids were the major fatty acids of sesame with average values of 45.7 and 37.2%, respectively. The total means of oleic and linoleic acids as unsaturated fatty acids of sesame were about 83% which increases the suitability of the sesame oil for human consumption. The superiority of the collection was observed in oil content. The oil content of a few accessions was above 60%, proving claims that some varieties of sesame can reach up to 63% in oil content. The accessions with the highest oil content were relatively richer in the linoleic acid content while there were some landraces in which linoleic and oleic acid contents were in a proportion of almost 1:1. The results obtained in this study provide useful background information for developing new cultivars with a high oil content and different fatty acid compositions. Several accessions could be used as parental lines in breeding programmes aiming to increase sesame oil quantity and quality.     

Second-order integral sliding-mode control with experimental application

In the present study, a second-order sliding-mode controller is proposed for single-input single-output (SISO) uncertain real systems. The proposed controller successively overcomes the variations caused by the uncertainties and external load disturbances although an approximate model of the system is used in the design procedure. An integral type sliding surface is used and the stability and robustness properties of the proposed controller are proved by means of Lyapunov stability theorem. The chattering phenomenon is significantly reduced adopting the switching gain with the known parameters of the system. Thus, the proposed controller is suitable for long-term application to the real systems. The performance of the proposed control scheme is validated by a real system experiments and the results are compared with the similar controllers presented in the literature.     

Improving power-performance via hybrid cache for chip many cores based on neural network prediction technique

Microsystem Technologies - Recently, the increasing need to run applications for significant data analytics, and the augmented demand of useful tools for big data computing systems has resulted in...     

Impacts of Multi-year Droughts and Upstream Human-Induced Activities on the Development of a Semi-arid Transboundary Basin

This paper aims at investigating the combined impacts of basin-wide multi-year droughts and upstream human-induced activities on current and future potential development of a semi-arid transboundary basin. The approach is based on the drought analysis through three widely used drought indices (Standardised Drought Index- SPI, Reconnaissance Drought Index - RDI and Streamflow Drought Index- SDI), coupled with the current and future conceivable man-made changes upstream, taking also into account the effects of climate change. As a representative case, the Diyala river basin, shared between Iraq and Iran, is selected. A close examination of the climate trends in the study area exhibits that the basin points to be drier, with a decreasein precipitation and rise in the rates of temperature and potential evapotranspiration. The comparison between RDI and SDI indicates the cumulative drought effects on runoff during recent multi-year droughts episodes (1999–2001 and 2008–2009), which crippled the socio-economic activities and influenced the environmental system. Further, the results reveal that the combined impacts of multi-year droughts at basin scale and the river damming, water abstraction and water diversion works upstream have significant effects on water availability, especially at the middle and lower parts of the basin, with impacts on the security of the irrigated agriculture and public water supply, contributing to displacement and tribal conflicts. The projected climate change conditions along with the water withdrawal schemes upstream, which will put into operation in the foreseeable future, are expected to increase the vulnerability of water security in the portion of the basin that lies in the downstream country.     

Synthesis of Zirconia Nanoparticles in Distilled Water Solution by Laser Ablation Technique

Pulsed laser ablation in liquid （PLAL） has become an increasingly important technique for metals production and metal oxides nanoparticles （NPs） and others. This technique has its many advantages compared with other conventional techniques （physical and chemical）. This work was devoted for production of zirconia （ZrO2） nanoparticles via PLAL technique from a solid zirconium target immersed in a wet environment in order to study the effect of this environment on the optical properties and structure of ZrO2 nanoparticles. The solutions which used for this purpose is distilled water （D.W）. The produces NPs were characterized by mean of many tests such as UV-visible （UV-Vis.）, transmission electron microscope （TEM） and Z-Potential. The UV-Vis. A spectrum has atwavelength is 271 nm. The TEM test shows less than 10 nm average particle sizes with spherical and irregular shapes. Z-Potential test shows value about ＋56.1 mV which indicate for NPs stability with extremely low agglomeration solution.