Design and Implementation of Wireless Smart Home Energy Management System Using Rule-Based Controller

Most residential units still rely on conventional energy supplied by utilities despite the continuous growth of renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind energy systems in power distribution networks. Utilities often use time-of-use energy pricing, which increases the interest of energy consumers, such as those in commercial and residential buildings, in reducing their energy usage. Thus, this work demonstrates the design and implementation of a home energy management (HEM) system that can automatically control home appliances to reduce daily energy and electricity bill. The system consists of multiple smart sockets that can read the power consumption of an attached appliance and actuate its on/off commands. It also consists of several other supporting instruments that provide information to the main controller. The smart sockets and supporting instruments in the system wirelessly provide the necessary data to a central controller. Then, the system analyzes the data gathered from these devices to generate control commands that operate the devices attached to the smart sockets. Control actions rely on a developed online rule-based HEM scheme. The rules of the algorithm are designed such that the lifestyle of the user is preserved while the energy consumption and daily energy cost of the controlled appliances are reduced. Experimental results show that the central controller can effectively receive data and control multiple devices from up to 18 m away without loss of data on the basis of a scheduled user program code. Moreover, online adaptation of the HEM scheme confirms significant reductions in the total daily energy consumption and daily electricity bill of 23.5 kWh and $2.898, respectively. Therefore, the proposed HEM system can be remarkably useful for home owners with high daily energy consumption

The Economic Impact of Immigration on Host Countries: The Case of Saudi Arabia

Over the past 40 years, the impact of immigration on employment, wages and other economic indicators has been robust and continually increasing. The relationship between migration and unemployment is determined by the characteristics of immigrants. This paper assesses the impact immigration has on economic development and unemployment in Saudi Arabia by explaining the shape of the causal relationship between immigration and economic performance on a macroeconomic scale. The data used for Saudi Arabia contains annual observation in the period between 1990 and 2010. With an econometric analysis based on the Jarque-Bera test for normal distribution, Dickey-Fuller for unit root test, Johansen cointegration tests and a vector error correction model test, we reveal that there is no cointegration among the variables. The Granger causality test explains that when the level of immigration raises, GDP per capita also increases. It has also been shown that immigration has no substantial influence on unemployment levels and vice vers

An Overview of Job Engagement in Jerash Private University: Job Engagement and its Influence on Job Performance

The purpose of this study mainly  focus  on  testing  the relationship of   job engagement and job performance  In Jerash private university,  The results of this  research  concerned with three dimensions of engagement summarized in physical ,emotional , and cognitive as next; there is no relationship between employee’s physical engagement and employee performance , positive relationship between emotional engagement and employee performance,  no  relationship between cognitive engagement and employee performance, and  positive relationship of employee engagement influences on employee performance . The study is based on exploratory--descriptive research design, with a structured questionnaire is, essentially, verbally administrated, predetermined questions asked, with little or no variation and with no scope for follow-up questions to responses. . A sample of 50 employees had been selected to represent Jerash University Keywords: Job performance, Job engagement, Physical engagement, Emotional engagement, Cognitive engagement

THE USE OF PHYSICAL PHENOMENON AS AN INNOVATIVE SOURCE IN ART EDUCATION

It is undoubtable that there is a reciprocity relationship between the different sciences and fields of knowledge. The relation between art and science is one that extends ancient times since both of them use search and experimentation methods in pursuit of reaching the best results and satisfactory solutions which makes them in continuous development. Likewise, Art education draws its references and aesthetic values from all that is found neoteric whether it is in nature, heritage or other sciences. The idea of integration between art and science prompts on finding innovative ways towards creativity, because whenever the sources behind the design were of a scientific nature, the higher the visual connotations are closer to perception and mental receptivity. Hence, researchers are trying to create new experimental approaches through the study and analysis of some physical phenomena, such as energy, frequency and vibration, which produces precise and perfect artistic forms in harmonious rhythms and in accordance with formalized geometric and mathematical relations of scientific origin that can be used by art students to create innovative design works as intellectual starting points, can be consulted and relied on as technical references, with a formal logic, and mental legitimation, which contributes to the enrichment of the aesthetic values ​​of the art work. So, this study aims to take advantage of some physical phenomena such as energy and frequency and vibration and its formal output as an innovative source in teaching arts

Avoiding state enumeration in dynamic checking of distributed programs

Distributed programs are particularly vulnerable to software faults. Bugs in these programs are usually very hard to detect without automatic verification. The idea of checking an expected property in a given distributed program run (also referred to as runtime verification) has recently been attracting a great deal of attention for analyzing execution traces to ensure the reliability and dependability of distributed programs. Due to concurrency, the number of global states of a distributed program run tends to grow exponentially with respect to the number of program statements executed. As a result, checking the satisfaction of a property in a given distributed program run can incur significant overhead. This thesis introduces various ideas and exploits them to develop efficient dynamic property checking algorithms. These include the use of atom, introducing and exploiting the notion of serialization and finally proposing a methodology that exploits the concept of atoms and partial order semantics to specify and to check properties of distributed programs. The abstract specification of a distributed program can be mapped to the lower level implementation by labeling the code blocks that belong to the abstract functionalities of the program that are expected to be performed atomically. Each labeled code block is called an atom. Dynamically, an atom includes all the events that result from executing the selected statements from the corresponding code block. An efficient on-the-fly atomicity error detection algorithm has been developed. It is shown that if a run of a distributed program is atomic then the required properties can be checked on a reduced lattice, referred to as the atomic state lattice, which is significantly smaller than the original state lattice. Even with atomization, the number of global states can still grow exponentially in the number of atoms executed. However, when a number of processes has to maintain a property, we expect that each process will be, at some point in time, aware of the events of other processes that may affect the property. Consequently, it is not necessary to check the property in each state. Only synchronized states, where processes have already exchanged the information necessary to maintain the property, need to be considered. These states can be characterized by a synchronization predicate. Serialization of synchronized states is the minimal avenue for a set of processes to exchange the necessary information to maintain a property. Two efficient algorithms to check the satisfaction of a property in a distributed computation in cases where the synchronization predicate is conjunctive or disjunctive have been developed. Finally, a methodology based on the concept of atoms and a partially ordered multi-set (POMSET) model to specify and to check distributed programs properties has been proposed. The POMSET model promotes the separation of two different concerns in specifying and checking properties, namely, the ordering requirements and the computational requirements. A methodology to specify and to efficiently check the two requirements has been introduced

Visual feature extraction from dermoscopic colour images for classification of melanocytic skin lesions

The early diagnosis of Melanoma is a challenging task for dermatologists, because of the characteristic similarities of Melanoma with other skin lesions such as typical moles and dysplastic nevi. Aims: This work aims to help both experienced and non-experienced dermatologists in the early detection of cutaneous Melanoma through the development of a computational helping tool based on the “ABCD” rule of dermoscopy. Moreover, it aims to decrease the need for invasive biopsy procedure for each tested abnormal skin lesion. Methods: This is accomplished through the utilization of MATLAB programming language to build a feature extraction tool for the assessment of lesion asymmetry, borders irregularity, and colors variation in the tested lesion. Results: The helping tool obtained a sensitivity of 81.48%, a specificity of 52.83% and accuracy of 62.50% in the assessment of the Asymmetry Index. A new metric for the borders irregularity index was built. Finally, for the Colors Variation Index algorithm a sensitivity of 51.37%, a specificity of 61.51% and accuracy of 57.80% was achieved. Conclusions: This work created a computational tool based on the ABCD-rule, which is helpful for both experienced and non-experienced dermatologists in the early discrimination of Melanoma than other types of skin lesions and to eliminate the need of the biopsy procedure. A new metric for the Borders Irregularity Index was established depending on the number of inflection points in the lesion’s borders

A Comparative Study of the Nature of Ransom and Wise from the Perspective of Feyz Kashani and Imam Khomeini

The nature of ransom and the issue of guaranteeing wisdom is one of the important issues in jurisprudence and law; various views have been expressed about it so far. The connection between the two goes back to the nature of ransom; if we consider ransom as a mere punishment, it is in conflict with the principle of personal punishment but if we consider the ransom as compensation, or consider it dual in nature, there will be no conflict between this rule and the principle. In this article, an attempt has been made to the nature of ransom and wisdom should be examined from the perspective of Feyz Kashani and Imam Khomeini, the basic question that arises in this regard is that; how can the views of Feyz Kashani and Imam Khomeini regarding the nature of ransom and wisdom be evaluated? The present article is an analytical description and has used the library method to examine the question. The results of the article indicate that; from the point of view of Feyz Kashani and also Imam Khomeini, ransom has a dual nature; because ransom, as an independent legal entity, has a civil aspect and compensates the damages and losses inflicted on the victim or his parents, on the other hand, it has a criminal aspect and provides the means of punishment and learning lessons for the perpetrator. Also, the payment made by the wise has been accepted from the point of view of Feyz Kashani and Imam Khomeini. Accordingly, whenever a non-Muslim citizen from Dhimma commits a pure mistake and is unable to pay the ransom, whenever a murderer commits premeditated murder and then escapes and he and his relatives have no money, whenever the person who committed the murder of a pure mistake does not have the wisdom of paying the wise ransom, or if his wisdom is incapable, the payment of ransom will be the responsibility of the treasury. From Imam Khomeini's point of view, the most important basis of the government's responsibility as a wise man is the rule of "Al-Kharaj bi Al-Dhiman" but Feyz Kashani has not discussed this issue