Dynamic Load Balancing protocols in WSN

In recent times, significant amount of research has been done in the vast area of wireless sensors networks (WSNs) owing to their multi dimensional applications in disaster management, health-care, monitoring systems, underwater application and many more. The major focus of research has been to enhance the life of the wireless sensor network via increasing the lifetime of each sensor node as a sudden or unpredictable 'death' of a node may bring the whole network down. To prevent this kind of disaster taking place we review in this paper various approaches which aim to enhance the lifetime of the WSN by dynamically distributing the load among the nodes and some other energy aware routing protocols too. DOI: 10.17762/ijritcc2321-8169.15066

Environmental Justice, Transit Equity and the Place for Immigrants in Toronto

In response to population growth and events, Toronto is currently in the midst of debates about transportation planning. However, the perspectives of immigrants, especially women, who depend heavily on public transit, are often missing from academic and policy debates on transportation planning in Toronto. Due to Toronto’s changing demographic landscape, a transit planning strategy that is based on a deeper understanding of how immigrant groups travel across the city can further social equity in transportation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with immigrants on their experiences of public transit in Toronto, the paper proposes an environmental justice framework in order to consider the equity and sustainability issues inherent in Toronto stakeholders’ focus on transit expansion. The research fi ndings highlight the limited aff ordability of public transit, the poor servicing and connectivity of transit networks, and the resulting barriers to accessing work opportunities across the region. The paper concludes by highlighting the need for new directions in transit policy and planning that can better address the changing demographics and social and spatial divisions in the city

Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms: Place-making and Translocal Space in Sikh Diaspora Across Hong Kong, Vancouver and Toronto

How does one see what one cannot see? With the objective to move past the orientalizing visual gaze of exotic temples, food and turbans this study instead draws attention to the itinerant and elusive place-making which are often overlooked in geographical and urban inquiries of othered religions. Multicultural frames of cosmopolitanism have centered on a visual and consumerist approach to order diverse places and peoples while reproducing binaries of public-private and secular-religious. Vinay Gidwani differently imagines a subaltern cosmopolitanism of dynamic practices of migrants that are transgressive of state and capitalist urban configurations. Similarly, AbdouMaliq Simone's notion of a worlding from below brings out the seemingly disparate activities of migrants in the Global South that characterize a lesser seen circuit of urbanity overlooked from top-down snapshots of urban infrastructure and financial capital. This study explores sensuous geographies of Sikhs to contribute to a conceptualization of worlding and cosmopolitanism. The theoretical framework considers the intertwining of religion and race at the source of the making of the problematic figure of Man and its secular-religious dichotomy. In this, the study aims to destabilize the world religion and liberal humanist paradigms which shape the modern episteme and the productions of worlds. The work of decolonial and transnational feminists further a poetic intervention to consider subaltern knowledge practices, particularly of women of colour, that go unrecognized in their embodied resistance. Following M. Jacqui Alexander's call for re-wiring the senses and a sacred feminist praxis, and Trinh T. Minh-has tuning to the musical storytelling, this study brings attention to sensuous poetics and topologies of Sikhs that escape representable cartographies. In that, Sikh spaces, epistemologies, and itineraries are conceptualized to give depth to a Sikh geographical imagination. Utilizing multi-sited ethnographies, qualitative interviews, and community mapping, the research followed diaspora Sikhs in Hong Kong, Greater Vancouver, and Greater Toronto. I argue that an everyday horizontal spatiality of relation emerges in Sikh processes of worlding and translocal space, which give insights to a subaltern cosmopolitanism, different from state and secular discourses of multiculturalism

IMPLEMENTASI PROBLEM TREE ANALYSIS PANDEMI COVID-19

Kecepatan transmisi Covid-19 dan tingginya angka kematian akibat Covid-19 menyebabkan dibutuhkannya upaya untuk memutus rantai penularan Covid-19. Salah satu strategi yang dapat digunakan untuk menemukan permasalahan yang menyebabkan cepatnya penularan atau transmisi Covid-19 adalah strategi problem tree analysis. Tujuan kajian pustaka ini adalah untuk menjelaskan strategi problem tree analysis dalam upaya menurunkan angka penyebaran dari Covid-19. Problem Tree Analysis merupakan sebuah metode perencanaan berdasarkan kebutuhan. Tiga tahapan dalam proses Problem Tree Analysis ini adalah analisis masalah terkait dengan subjek, analisis tujuan, dan analisis strategi. Hasil utama dari strategi ini berupa diagram berbentuk batang pohon yang mewakili fokus masalah, akar mewakili penyebab masalah dan cabangnya berupa dampak dari masalah tersebut. Menurut Problem Tree Analysis yang telah dirancang dalam penelitian ini, penyebab dari cepatnya penyebaran Covid-19 di Indonesia adalah tingkat kepadatan penduduk yang tinggi, penerapan handhygine yang kurang baik, sanksi bagi pelanggar kebijakan yang belum optimal dan masih banyak aktivitas di luar rumah seperti pasar atau pusat perdagangan. Kesulitan dalam menerapkan PSBB, rendahnya pengetahuan masyarakat akan bahaya Covid-19, pelanggaran pada kebijakan yang ditetapkan pemerintah, sebagian besar masyarakat memiliki ekonomi menengah atau menengah ke bawah diduga merupakan akar dari penyebab masalah cepatnya penyebaran Covid-19 di Indonesia. Diharapkan dengan mengetahui sebab akibat dari cepatnya penyebaran Covid-19 di Indonesia ini dapat membantu untuk menurunkan angka penyebaran dari Covid-19 di Indonesia

Subaltern Cosmopolitanisms: Place-making and Translocal Space in Sikh Diaspora Across Hong Kong, Vancouver and Toronto

How does one see what one cannot see? With the objective to move past the orientalizing visual gaze – of exotic temples, food and turbans – this study instead draws attention to the itinerant and elusive place-making which are often overlooked in geographical and urban inquiries of othered religions. Multicultural frames of cosmopolitanism have centered on a visual and consumerist approach to order diverse places and peoples while reproducing binaries of public-private and secular-religious. Vinay Gidwani differently imagines a subaltern cosmopolitanism of dynamic practices of migrants that are transgressive of state and capitalist urban configurations. Similarly, AbdouMaliq Simone's notion of a worlding from below brings out the seemingly disparate activities of migrants in the Global South that characterize a lesser seen circuit of urbanity overlooked from top-down snapshots of urban infrastructure and financial capital. This study explores sensuous geographies of Sikhs to contribute to a conceptualization of worlding and cosmopolitanism. The theoretical framework considers the intertwining of religion and race at the source of the making of the problematic figure of Man and its secular-religious dichotomy. In this, the study aims to destabilize the world religion and liberal humanist paradigms which shape the modern episteme and the productions of worlds. The work of decolonial and transnational feminists further a poetic intervention to consider subaltern knowledge practices, particularly of women of colour, that go unrecognized in their embodied resistance. Following M. Jacqui Alexander's call for re-wiring the senses and a sacred feminist praxis, and Trinh T. Minh-ha’s tuning to the musical storytelling, this study brings attention to sensuous poetics and topologies of Sikhs that escape representable cartographies. In that, Sikh spaces, epistemologies, and itineraries are conceptualized to give depth to a Sikh geographical imagination. Utilizing multi-sited ethnographies, qualitative interviews, and community mapping, the research followed diaspora Sikhs in Hong Kong, Greater Vancouver, and Greater Toronto. I argue that an everyday horizontal spatiality of relation emerges in Sikh processes of worlding and translocal space, which give insights to a subaltern cosmopolitanism, different from state and secular discourses of multiculturalism

Dielectric Properties of ZnO-Based Nanocomposites and Their Potential Applications

Energy storage devices constitute one of the research areas in recent years. Capacitors are commonly used for the storage of electrical energy. The current research is focusing on not only the improvement in energy density but also the materials which are environment friendly. Polymer composites are known to be technically essential materials owing to their wide range of applications. Enormous research has been devoted to zinc oxide- (ZnO-) based polymer nanocomposites, due to their extraordinary dielectric properties. This review article presents a detailed study of the dielectric properties of ZnO-based nanocomposites. The dielectric constant study includes the effect of transition metals and rare earth metals as a dopant in ZnO. This review gives an insight into the mechanism responsible for the variation of dielectric constant in ZnO nanocomposites due to various factors like size of nanoparticles, thickness of the thin film, operating frequency, doping concentration, and atomic number. The observations have been summarized to convey the mechanism and structural changes involved in the ZnO nanocomposites to the researchers. The deployment of biodegradable nanocomposite materials is expected to open an innovative way for their outstanding electronic applications as storage materials

An enigmatic fourth runt domain gene in the fugu genome: ancestral gene loss versus accelerated evolution

BACKGROUND: The runt domain transcription factors are key regulators of developmental processes in bilaterians, involved both in cell proliferation and differentiation, and their disruption usually leads to disease. Three runt domain genes have been described in each vertebrate genome (the RUNX gene family), but only one in other chordates. Therefore, the common ancestor of vertebrates has been thought to have had a single runt domain gene. RESULTS: Analysis of the genome draft of the fugu pufferfish (Takifugu rubripes) reveals the existence of a fourth runt domain gene, FrRUNT, in addition to the orthologs of human RUNX1, RUNX2 and RUNX3. The tiny FrRUNT packs six exons and two putative promoters in just 3 kb of genomic sequence. The first exon is located within an intron of FrSUPT3H, the ortholog of human SUPT3H, and the first exon of FrSUPT3H resides within the first intron of FrRUNT. The two gene structures are therefore "interlocked". In the human genome, SUPT3H is instead interlocked with RUNX2. FrRUNT has no detectable ortholog in the genomes of mammals, birds or amphibians. We consider alternative explanations for an apparent contradiction between the phylogenetic data and the comparison of the genomic neighborhoods of human and fugu runt domain genes. We hypothesize that an ancient RUNT locus was lost in the tetrapod lineage, together with FrFSTL6, a member of a novel family of follistatin-like genes. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that the runt domain family may have started expanding in chordates much earlier than previously thought, and exemplify the importance of detailed analysis of whole-genome draft sequence to provide new insights into gene evolution

Work-in-Progress: Statistics Components in a Circuits Laboratory for ECE Sophomores

Statistics concepts are required for undergraduate curricula in electrical engineering and computer engineering (ECE). Accreditation guidelines specify that such instruction must include “applications appropriate to the program name” [ABET Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, 2014-2015]. Curricula content in probability and statistics are commonly done in a stand-alone course, but additional exposure within engineering-content courses can provide great value. Many basic concepts can be introduced before the comprehensive stand-alone course. A good ECE context is an electrical circuits laboratory in which students need to understand electrical component tolerances and related design issues. Statistics-related assignments in a required, sophomore-level laboratory course are described for applications involving resistor tolerances. Exposure to basic statistics concepts and computer resources in an introductory in-major course facilitates more advanced instruction in follow-on in-major courses

Microcavity Strain Sensor for High Temperature Applications

A microcavity extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric (EFPI) fiber-optic sensor is presented for measurement of strain. The EFPI sensor is fabricated by micromachining a cavity on the tip of a standard single-mode fiber with a femtosecond (fs) laser and is then self-enclosed by fusion splicing another piece of single-mode fiber. The fs-laser-based fabrication makes the sensor thermally stable to sustain temperatures as high as 800°C. The sensor exhibits linear performance for a range up to 3700 µε and a low temperature sensitivity of only 0.59 pm/°C through 800°C