Agricultural Academy

Abstract KAYMAK, H. C., I. GUVENC and A. GUROL, 2010. Elemental analysis of different radish (Raphanus sativus L.) Cultivars by using wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (WDXRF). Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., The aim of this work is to study the applicability of a quantitative WDXRF (Wavelength-Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence) method, for determination of minerals in radish specimens. In this study, we have quantitatively and semi-quantitatively analysed the four different radish (Raphanus sativus L.) cultivars (cvs. 'Siyah', 'Beyaz', 'Antep' and 'Iri-Kirimizi'). We have found that major elements; namely N and K; a few minor elements; Na, Mg, P, S, and Ca, and a lot of trace elements; Mn, Fe, Cu, Zn, Al, Ti, Cr, Br, Rb, Sr, Sn, Ba and La. The obtained trace element concentrations range from 0.01 to 3.24 mg per 100 g. This rapid method has been found to be a reliable technique for analyzing the mineral content in radish. At the end of this work, it was clearly said that Wavelengthdispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (WDXRF) could be used for the analysis of mineral contents of radish and other vegetables

Enhancements to linear least squares localization through reference selection and ML estimation

Linear least squares (LLS) estimation is a low complexity but sub-optimum method for estimating the location of a mobile terminal (MT) from some distance measurements. It requires selecting one of the fixed terminals (FTs) as a reference FT for obtaining a linear set of expressions. However, selection of the reference FT is commonly performed arbitrarily in the literature. In this paper, a method for selection of the reference FT is proposed, which improves the location accuracy compared to a fixed selection of the reference FT. Moreover, a covariancematrix based LLS estimator is proposed in line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) environments which further improves accuracy since the correlations between the observations are exploited. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed techniques. © 2008 IEEE

Optical response of Ag-Au bimetallic nanoparticles to electron storage in aqueous medium

Composition and structure dependence of the shift in the position of the surface plasmon resonance band upon introduction of NaBH 4 to aqueous solutions of gold and silver nanoparticles are presented. Silver and gold nanoalloys in different compositions were prepared by co-reduction of the corresponding salt mixtures using sodium citrate as the reducing agent. After addition of NaBH 4 to the resultant nanoalloys, the maximum of their surface plasmon resonance band, ranging between that of pure silver (ca. 400 nm) and of pure gold (ca. 530 nm), is blue-shifted as a result of electron storage on the particles. The extent of this blue shift increases non-linearly with the mole fraction of silver in the nanoparticle, parallel to the trends reported previously for both the frequency and the extinction coefficient of the plasmon band shifts. Gold(core)@silver(shell) nanoparticles were prepared by sequential reduction of gold and silver, where addition of NaBH 4 results in relatively large spectral shift in the plasmon resonance band when compared with the nanoalloys having a similar overall composition. The origin of the large plasmon band shift in the core-shell is related with a higher silver surface concentration on these particles. Hence, the chemical nature of the nanoparticle emerges as the dominating factor contributing to the extent of the spectral shift as a result of electron storage in bimetallic systems. Copyright © 2008 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved

Interference management for moving networks in ultra-dense urban scenarios

The number of users relying on broadband wireless connectivity while riding public transportation vehicles is increasing significantly. One of the promising solutions is to deploy moving base stations on public transportation vehicles to form moving networks (MNs) that serve these vehicular users inside the vehicles. In this study, we investigated the benefits and challenges in deploying MNs in ultra-dense urban scenarios. We identified that the key challenge limiting the performance of MNs in ultra-dense urban scenarios is inter-cell interference, which is exacerbated by the urban canyon effects. To address this challenge, we evaluated different inter-cell interference coordination and multi-antenna interference suppression techniques for MNs. We showed that in using MNs together with effective interference management approaches, the quality of service for users in vehicles can be significantly improved, with negligible impacts on the performance of regular outdoor users

A decentralized spectrum allocation and partitioning scheme for a two-tier macro-femtocell network with downlink beamforming

This article examines spectrum allocation and partitioning schemes to mitigate cross-tier interference under downlink beamforming environments. The enhanced SIR owing to beamforming allows more femtocells to share their spectrum with the macrocell and accordingly improves overall spectrum efficiency. We first design a simplified centralized scheme as the optimum and then propose a practical decentralized algorithm that determines which femtocells to use the full or partitioned spectrum with acceptable control overhead. To exploit limited information of the received signal strength efficiently, we consider two types of probabilistic femtocell base station (HeNB) selection policies. They are equal selection and interference weighted selection policies, and we drive their outage probabilities for a macrocell user. Through performance evaluation, we demonstrate that the outage probability and the cell capacity in our decentralized scheme are significantly better than those in a conventional cochannel deployment scheme. Furthermore, we show that the cell utility in our proposed scheme is close to that in the centralized scheme and better than that in the spectrum partitioning scheme with a fixed ratio.open0

Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

Taxonomy of fundamental concepts of localization in cyber-physical and sensor networks

Localization is a fundamental task in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), where data is tightly coupled with the environment and the location where it is generated. The research literature on localization has reached a critical mass, and several surveys have also emerged. This review paper contributes on the state-of-the-art with the proposal of a new and holistic taxonomy of the fundamental concepts of localization in CPS, based on a comprehensive analysis of previous research works and surveys. The main objective is to pave the way towards a deep understanding of the main localization techniques, and unify their descriptions. Furthermore, this review paper provides a complete overview on the most relevant localization and geolocation techniques. Also, we present the most important metrics for measuring the accuracy of localization approaches, which is meant to be the gap between the real location and its estimate. Finally, we present open issues and research challenges pertaining to localization. We believe that this review paper will represent an important and complete reference of localization techniques in CPS for researchers and practitioners and will provide them with an added value as compared to previous surveys

Quantitative PCR of ear discharge from Indigenous Australian children with acute otitis media with perforation supports a role for Alloiococcus otitidis as a secondary pathogen

Otitis media is endemic in remote Indigenous communities of Australia’s Northern Territory. Alloiococcus otitidis is an outer ear commensal and putative middle ear pathogen that has not previously been described in acute otitis media (AOM) in this population. The aims of this study were to determine the presence, antibiotic susceptibility and bacterial load of A. otitidis in nasopharyngeal and ear discharge swabs collected from Indigenous Australian children with AOM with perforation.Financial support for this study was provided by the Channel 7 Children’s Research Foundation; The Trust Foundation; and the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia)