Technologies and solutions for location-based services in smart cities: past, present, and future

Location-based services (LBS) in smart cities have drastically altered the way cities operate, giving a new dimension to the life of citizens. LBS rely on location of a device, where proximity estimation remains at its core. The applications of LBS range from social networking and marketing to vehicle-toeverything communications. In many of these applications, there is an increasing need and trend to learn the physical distance between nearby devices. This paper elaborates upon the current needs of proximity estimation in LBS and compares them against the available Localization and Proximity (LP) finding technologies (LP technologies in short). These technologies are compared for their accuracies and performance based on various different parameters, including latency, energy consumption, security, complexity, and throughput. Hereafter, a classification of these technologies, based on various different smart city applications, is presented. Finally, we discuss some emerging LP technologies that enable proximity estimation in LBS and present some future research areas

Drop size in a liquid pulsed sieve-plate extraction column

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Clay-Iron Nanocomposite for the Removal of Sulfur as Toxic Pollutant from Fuel by Catalytic Oxidative Desulfurization

The current environmental pollution has great impact on climate change and the present study was aimed at removal of sulfur as a pollutant for environment on combustion of kerosene fuel using clay, namely attapulgite and magnetic iron (ATP)-Fe3O4 nanocomposite. To lower the toxic sulfur and to enhance the property of reduced sulfur fuel specifically the electrical conductivity (EC) was also improved by the addition of quality improver additives. The (ATP)-Fe3O4 nanocomposite was synthesized by co-precipitation method and the structure, and morphology were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The average size of Fe-NPs which helps in the oxidative desulfurization was found to be <100 nm, and the toxic sulfur content in fuel was reduced up to 71% from its original using 05mg/mL of nanocomposite at 150°C for 30 min along with CH3COOH and H2O2 proceed with water washing. The EC of the oxidative desulfurized (ODS) fuel was enhanced by the addition of (0.5, 0.7 and 1.0ppm) STADIS 450 additive as compared to MEROX kerosene fuel (untreated). The ODS kerosene showed greater stability of EC over MEROX kerosene

A Miniaturized Wide Band Implantable Antenna for Biomedical Application

In this paper, a miniaturized high gain antenna was designed for biomedical applications. The designed antenna operates on the industrial, medical, and scientific(2.40 - 2.4835) GHz band. The proposed antenna consists of the radiating element having rectangular, and circular slots, and a ground plane with rectangular slots. The total volume of the designed antenna is (7x7xO.2) mm 3 , and the thickness of the superstrate and substrate is 0.1 mm. The Rogers ULTRALAM (e , = 2.9, tanD = 0.0025) material is used for substrate and superstrate. The proposed antenna is placed inside the different phantoms of the human body. The maximum gain achieved by the simulations of the proposed antenna is -12 dBi at 2.45 GHz. The designed antenna has better results than the antennas discussed in the literature in term of size, gain, and bandwidth

Design and Analysis of Compact Antenna for 5G Communication Devices

A novel slotted rectangular patch antenna for E and W band, which resonates at the frequency of 67 GHz and has impedance bandwidth of 13.2 GHz, is used for resolving the issues of compactness, gain and efficiency of antenna designs for future generation 5G devices such as watches, and dongles. The single element antenna, having a dimension of 5.5 × 4.7 × 0.381 mm3, with a realized gain of 8.9 dBi was achieved. A rectangular slot was placed in the ground plane, just under the feed line of a microstrip patch antenna (MSPA), and this works as a defected ground structure (DGS): this improved the gain by up to 2 dB in the proposed design. The partial ground is used for tuning the impedance bandwidth. The rationale for the DGS, the partial ground, and the effect of the slot technique are discussed and implemented in this paper

A business and legislative perspective of V2X and mobility applications in 5G networks

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication is a powerful concept that not only ensures public safety (e.g., by avoiding road accidents) but also offers many economic benefits (e.g., by optimizing the macroscopic behavior of the traffic across an area). On the one hand, V2X communication brings new business opportunities for many stakeholders, such as vehicle manufacturers, retailers, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), V2X service providers, and governments. On the other hand, the convergence of these stakeholders to a common platform possesses many technical and business challenges. In this article, we identify the issues and challenges faced by V2X communications, while focusing on the business models. We propose different solutions to potentially resolve the identified challenges in the framework of 5G networks and propose a high-level hierarchy of a potential business model for a 5G-based V2X ecosystem. Moreover, we provide a concise overview of the legislative status of V2X communications across different regions in the world

Groundwater Quality Assessment for Drinking Purpose of Taluka Chachro, Thar Desert, Pakistan; Using Water Quality Indices, and Geospatial Techniques

Groundwater quality of taluka Chachro was investigated by analyzing thirty-two groundwater samples for drinking purpose. Multivariate statistical approaches with GIS interpolations (IDW) were applied for the identification of significant geochemical processes governing the groundwater quality.. Results showed the concentrations of physiochemical parameter in the study area exceeded the prescribed level of WHO guidelines. The EC and TDS varied from 2593-18950 µS/cm and 1659-12128 mg/l, respectively. The Ca, Mg, Na, and K range from 36-288, 17-272, 420-3280, and 9.5-101 mg/l, respectively. While, Cl, HCO3, SO4, and NO3 varied from 539-5738, 210-1150, 79-870, and 6.66-17.13 mg/l respectively. The mean values of EC, TDS, Na, Cl, HCO3, SO4, and NO3 were higher than the prescribed level of WHO 2011. Higher concentrations above the acceptable limits were recorded for K 96.15%, SO488.46%, and HCO3 82.16% of analysed samples. Multivariate statistical analysis suggested that the input of natural processes have influenced groundwater quality which resulted in changing the groundwater chemistry of taluka Chachro. The results revealed the dominant trend among the cations was Na>Ca>Mg>K while among the anions it was Cl>HCO3>SO4. Based on the drinking water quality index 50% were unsuitable for drinking

A survey on sentiment analysis in Urdu: A resource-poor language

© 2020 Background/introduction: The dawn of the internet opened the doors to the easy and widespread sharing of information on subject matters such as products, services, events and political opinions. While the volume of studies conducted on sentiment analysis is rapidly expanding, these studies mostly address English language concerns. The primary goal of this study is to present state-of-art survey for identifying the progress and shortcomings saddling Urdu sentiment analysis and propose rectifications. Methods: We described the advancements made thus far in this area by categorising the studies along three dimensions, namely: text pre-processing lexical resources and sentiment classification. These pre-processing operations include word segmentation, text cleaning, spell checking and part-of-speech tagging. An evaluation of sophisticated lexical resources including corpuses and lexicons was carried out, and investigations were conducted on sentiment analysis constructs such as opinion words, modifiers, negations. Results and conclusions: Performance is reported for each of the reviewed study. Based on experimental results and proposals forwarded through this paper provides the groundwork for further studies on Urdu sentiment analysis

Effect of 1-Methyl Cyclopropane and Modified Atmosphere Packaging on the Storage of Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) : Theory and Experiments

Okra possesses a short shelf-life which limits its marketability, thereby, the present study investigates the individual and combined effect of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) and modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) on the postharvest storage life of okra. The treated/ untreated okra samples were stored at ambient (i.e., 27 °C) and low (i.e., 7 °C) temperatures for eight and 20 days, respectively. Results revealed that the 1-MCP and/or MAP treatment successfully inhibited fruit softening, reduction in mucilage viscosity, and color degradation (hue angle, ∆E, and BI) in the product resulting in a longer period of shelf-life. However, MAP with or without 1-MCP was more effective to reduce weight loss in okra stored at both ambient and cold storage conditions. Additionally, ascorbic acid and total antioxidants were also retained in 1-MCP with MAP during cold storage. The 1-MCP in combination with MAP effectively suppressed respiration rate and ethylene production for four days and eight days at 27 °C and 7 °C temperature conditions, respectively. According to the results, relatively less chilling injury stress also resulted when 1-MCP combined with MAP. The combined treatment of okra pods with 1-MCP and MAP maintained the visual quality of the product in terms of overall acceptability for four days at 20 °C and 20 days at 7 °C