A testbed to simulate cyber attacks on nuclear power plants

Nuclear power plants are critical infrastructures that must be safe and secure from undesirable intrusions: these intrusions are both physical and cyber. The increasing usage of digital control and computer systems, for supervisory control and data acquisition in the control rooms of new generation nuclear reactors, has introduced several cyber security issues that must be addressed. One of the most significant problems is that this new technology has increased the vulnerability of the nuclear power plant to cyber security threats. Furthermore, this exposed vulnerability is one of the main reasons that the transition to digital control rooms connected to enterprise network (or the internet) has been slow and hesitant. In order to address these issues and ensure that a digital control system is safe and secure from undesirable intrusions, the system must go through extensive tests and validation. These tests will verify that systems are safe and properly functioning. The vulnerabilities of a nuclear power plant can be determined through conducting cyber security exercises, cyber security attacks scenarios, and simulated attacks. All these events can be performed using the control room in the nuclear power plant, but it is a complicated and hampered process because of the complex hardware and software interactions that must be considered. Control rooms are also not ideal places to test various cyber attacks and scenarios because any mishap can lead to detrimental impacts on the nearby surroundings. This research attempts to present our approach to build a comparative testbed that captures the relevant complexity of a nuclear power plant. A testbed is developed and designed to assess the vulnerabilities that are introduced by using public networks for communications. The testbed is also used to simulate different cyber attack scenarios and it will serve to present detection mechanisms that are based on the understanding of the controlled physical system

Variation of Faba Beans (Vicia faba L.) Traits Induced By Heat, Electric Shock and Mutagen Nitrous Acid

This research was carried out to determine the impact of heat shock, electric shock and seeds in soaking nitrous acid mutagen solution on three cultivars of faba beans plant (Zaina, Aguadulce and Local) at the year 2012-2013. Factorial experiment was arranged in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates were used. The results showed that heat shock lead to early plants of 50% in flowering and an increase in the number of branches/plant and the number of seeds/pod compared to other treatments, whereas the seeds soaked in nitrous acid mutagen solution gave the highest plant height, leaf area index, number of pods/plant, seed weight, seed yield kg/ha, and did not differ significantly with treatment of electric shock in the protein yield(kg/ha). Zaina cultivar was superior over other cultivars in early to 50% flowering, number of branches/plant, number of pods/plant and seed weight, while gave the lowest value in plant height. Significant differences also observed for the interaction between cultivars and treatments. Zaina cultivar with heat shock treatment gave less number of days to 50% flowering, highest number of branches/plant and the number of seeds/pod, either when seeds soaked in nitrous acid mutagen solution given the highest plant height of plant, highest mean of seed weight, seed yield kg/ha and did not differ significantly with local variety in the number of pods/plant trait

Sailfin velifer, Velifer hypselopterus Bleeker, 1879 (Perciformes, Veliferidae) in Oman waters: a new substantiated record from the Arabian Sea coast of Oman

The first substantiated records of Sailfin velifer, Velifer hypselopterus Bleeker, 1879 in Omani waters are reported based on 10 specimens ranging in total length 300-430 mm, which have been collected by gill net on the coast of Al-Ashkharah City, 319 km south of Muscat City, Arabian Sea, Oman. Morphometric and meristic data are provided and compared with those of several specimens of this species from other parts of the world. This study reports on the largest specimen of this species ever being collected

Energetic Investigation and Economic Feasibility for a University Campus in Romania towards Becoming an Energy Supplier

This research investigates and evaluates the University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPB) possibilities to become an energy self-supplying by building up its own power plant and becoming an energy distributor. The campus has already been connected to the national natural gas supplying pipe and the local district heating and electrical network.A set of criteria was used to evaluate the feasibility of this project. Technical, financial, and environmental considerations were taken into account to determine the most suitable solution. The feasibility study assumed three proposals of an energy supply system considered for the university buildings / campus. Gas-fired heating plant, gas-fired Internal Combustion Engine cogeneration plant and gas fired Internal Combustion Engine for cogeneration with an Organic Rankine Cycle ORC.The details of each proposal were discussed to obtain the optimum solution. Elaborate. It was found from a financial and environmental perspective that the most feasible project is gas-fired Internal Combustion Engine cogeneration, considering profit revenue from selling / exporting power to the domestic electricity grid. And the Net Present Value was around one million euros for 15 years life

Radioactive and Environmental Pollution in the Hilla River

يعد التلوث البيئي من أكبر مشاكل هذا العصر, ومن أكثرها خطورة على مستقبل الحياة فوق كوكب الأرض. ان اغلب العلماء اختلفوا في تحديد تعريف دقيق للمفهوم العلمي الخاص بالتلوث البيئي وأياً كان المفهوم العلمي للتلوث الاشعاعي مرتبط بالدرجة الاساسية بالنظام البيئي (Eco System), فالتباين النوعي و الكمي الذي يحصل على تركيب مواد وعناصر هذا النظام يؤدي الى اختلال في توازن هذا النظام مما يؤدي الى حدوث تأثيرات مباشرة او غير مباشرة في النظام البيئي، و أحد أنواع التلوث البيئي هو التلوث الإشعاعي الذي يمثل مشكلة مهمة ومعقدة. يشكل التلوث الإشعاعي ثقلاً متزايداً على المكونات المختلفة لبيئتنا من ضمنها التربة التي تعد طبقة حية تتفاعل الكثير من العوامل الطبيعية والكيميائية والحياتية في تكوينها وتطورها وإكسابها خواصها المختلفة. تكمن أهمية التربة من حيث إنها المستقبل للمواد المشعة وأن دورها بعيد الأمد يكون بوصفها مستودعاً للمواد المشعة وفي الوقت نفسه بوصفها مصدراً لهذه المواد في تلوث الهواء والماء والنبات.Environmental pollution is one of the biggest problems of this age, and one of the most dangerous for the future of life on Earth. Most of the scientists differed in determining a precise definition of the scientific concept of environmental pollution, and whatever the scientific concept of radioactive pollution is related primarily to the ecosystem (Eco System), The qualitative and quantitative variation that occurs in the composition of the materials and elements of this system leads to an imbalance in the balance of this system, which leads to direct or indirect effects on the ecosystem, and one of the types of environmental pollution is radioactive pollution, which represents an important and complex problem. Radioactive pollution places an increasing burden on the various components of our environment, including soil, which is a living layer. Many natural, chemical and biological factors interact in their various formation, development and properties. The importance of soil lies in the fact that it is the future of radioactive materials and its long-term role as a repository of radioactive materials and at the same time a source of these materials in air, water and plant pollution. Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample Abstract sample

Processing Seismic Data with Open Source Software

Open source seismic processing softwares provides a low cost alternative to commercial softwares and, with an appropriately directed development, an ability to adapt to the changing research needs. The best known example of such kind is Seismic Unix, a free reflection processing system developed at the Colorado School of Mines. It has been broadly used in research and teaching seismology and also in smaller scale seismic processing industry. Through this paper the seismic Unix was tested for the first time at Iraqi academic system by processing a real seismic data acquired at northern Iraq at Basra province. The test done by reliance a simple processing flow and the result show us high resolution seismic section and less noise ratio. According to the early mentioned results the seismic Unix recommended as a teaching tool for Iraqi educational system

Increasing the rate of intrusion detection based on a hybrid technique

This paper presents techniques to increase intrusion detection rates. Theses techniques are based on specific features that are detected and it's shown that a small number of features (9) can yield improved detection rates compared to higher numbers. These techniques utilize soft computing techniques such a Backpropagation based artificial neural networks and fuzzy sets. These techniques achieve a significant improvement over the state of the art for standard DARPA benchmark data

A feature extraction method for Arabic Offline Handwritten Recognition System using Naïve Bayes classifier

Handwriting recognition in the Arabic language is considered one of the most challenging problems and the accuracies in recognizing still need more enhancements due to the Arabic character’s nature, cursive writing, style, and size of writing in contrast to working with other languages. In this paper, we propose a system for Arabic Offline Handwritten Character Recognition based on Naïve Bayes classifier (NB). Extraction features preceded by divided the image of character into three horizontal and vertical zones and 3x3 zones in one and two dimensions respectively, then classified by Naïve Bayes. The performance of the system proposes evaluated by using the benchmark CENPARMI database reached up to 97.05% accuracy rate. Experimental results confirm a high enhancement inaccuracy rate in comparison with other Arabic Optical Character Recognition systems