Designing and Implimentation of Spatial IP Address Assignment Scheme for a Wireless Network

Wireless sensor networks are composed of large numbers up to thousands of tiny radio- equipped sensors. Every sensor has a small microprocessor with enough power to allow the sensors to autonomously form networks through which sensor information is gathered. Wireless sensor networks makes it possible to monitor places like nuclear disaster areas or volcano craters without requiring humans to be immediately present. Many wireless sensor network applications cannot be performed in isolation; the sensor network must somehow be connected to monitoring and controlling entities. This research paper investigates a novel approach for connecting sensor networks to existing networks: by using the TCP/IP protocol suite in the sensor network, the sensors can be directly connected to an outside network without the need for special proxy servers or protocol converters. Bringing TCP/IP to wireless sensor networks is a challenging task, however. First, because of their limited physical size and low cost, sensors are severely constrained in terms of memory and processing power. Traditionally, these constraints have been considered too limiting for a sensor to be able to use the TCP/IP protocols. In this research paper, I show that even tiny sensors can communicate using TCP/IP. Second, the harsh communication conditions make TCP/IP perform poorly in terms of both throughput and energy efficiency. With this research paper, I suggest a number of optimizations that are intended to increase the performance of TCP/IP for sensor networks. The results of the work presented in this research paper have a significant impact on the embedded TCP/IP networking community. The software evolves as part of the research paper has become widely known in the community. The software is mentioned in books on embedded systems and networking, is used in academic courses on embedded systems, is the focus of articles in professional magazines, is incorporated in embedded operating systems, and is used in a

Inclusive Governance and Biodiversity Conservation: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

We examine the conservation effects attributable to changes in the size of community-governed protected areas (PAs) by adopting a generalized difference-in-difference (DID) design with a two-way fixed effect regression model and synthetic control methods. Panel data from the extraordinary datasets of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPAs) and the Red List of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are used for 32 Sub-Saharan African countries in this study. Our generalized DID estimates show that countries with community-governed PAs have reduced the IUCN Red List threat level by 17% for mammals. We also find stronger evidence of the effect of community-governed PAs on the IUCN threat level using synthetic control method that allows us to match the “intervention countries” with those countries that exhibit similar pre-intervention threat level. Our results are robust on alternate specifications in which we exploit variations in the cumulative size of the designated PAs differentiated by the IUCN governance types. We also compare the effect of strictly state-governed PAs with community-governed PAs. Our findings provide evidence in support of recent qualitative studies that find positive responses of community participation towards common goods that carry potential economic incentives. This paper contributes to the idea that inclusive environmental policies and legislations yield environmental gains not at the cost of social exclusion.1

Prevalence and Psychological Characterization of Smoking amongst University Students in Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Purpose: To evaluate smoking, its causes, ill effects on the health and symptoms associated with smoking and smoking withdrawal among university students of Abbottabad, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.Methods: The questionnaire based study was conducted amongst university students in Abbottabad, Pakistan during November – December, 2012. Data were collected from university students using a self-administered questionnaire through simple random sampling.Results: Most subjects (43.6 %) started smoking during college life. Out of the total, 27.2 % of the subjects were of the opinion that smoking is a bad habit, but they still continued smoking. Among them, 17.6 % started smoking to ‘feel’ like adults, 20.8 % started just to feel the experience of doing so, 17.6 % were under the bad influence of friends and 8.4 % people wanted to escape from stressful life and seek comfort in smoking. Symptoms associated with smoking were shortness of breath (22.4 %), tiredness (17.2 %), chest pain (22.8 %), sleeping problem (16.8 %) and cough (43.2 %). Moreover, symptoms associated with withdrawal include mood disturbance (16.1 %), headache (9.9 %), tiredness (7.5 %), constipation (11.3 %), dry mouth (10.4 %), sleep disturbance (6.9 %), cough (5.4 %) and study problem (9.3 %).Conclusion: Smoking habit among the university students is common and in many cases results from experimentation and feeling of adulthood. Proper education on the dangers of smoking is vital.Keywords: Psychology, Smoking, Health, Withdrawal symptoms, Counselin

Allelopathy and Agricultural Sustainability: Implication in weed management and crop protection—an overview

Crop plants have defined roles in agricultural production and feeding the world. They are affected by several environmental and biological stresses, which range from soil salinity, drought, and climate change to exposure to diverse plant pathogens. These stresses pose risk to agricultural sustainability. To avoid the increasing biotic and abiotic pressure on crop plants, agrochemicals are extensively used in agriculture for attaining desirable yield and production of crops. However, the use of agrochemicals is also challenging the integrity of ecosystems. Thus, to maintain the integrity of ecosystem, sustainable measures for elevated crop production are required. Allelopathy, a process of chemical interactions between plants and other organisms, could be used in the management of several biotic and abiotic stresses if the basic mechanisms of the phenomena and plants with allelopathic potentials are known. Allelopathy has a promising future for its application in agriculture for natural weed management, improving soil health and suppressing plant diseases. The aim of this review is to discuss the importance of allelopathy in agriculture and its role in sustainability with a specific focus on weed management and crop protection

Governance and sustainable devleopment

Thesis(Doctoral) --KDI School:Ph.D in Public Policy,2018To what extent community inclusion in protected areas’ governance affect biodiversity outcomes is the main question that we attempt to answer in chapter 1 using the extra-ordinary datasets of the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPAs) and the Redlist of International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We exploit variation in cumulative size of designated protected areas differentiated by IUCN governance types and estimate the threat to mammals and birds in Sub-Saharan African countries. We find stronger effect of community inclusion in protected areas’ decision making on the reduction of threat to mammals while no significant effect on the threat level to birds. Our findings provide evidence in support of positive response of community participation towards common goods that carry potential economic incentives. This chapter contributes to the idea of inclusive environmental policies that yield environmental gains not at the cost of social exclusion. We frame the governance structure of community-based trophy hunting(CBTH) programs as a form of collaborative governance that involve multiple stakeholders in the management of common pool resources. By conducting a mataanalysis on 80 published case studies, we develop contingency propositions that help practitioners and governments to understand and implement programs that seek environmental conservation in collaboration with local communities. We identify factors that may interplay to affect the incentive to participate in community based conservation programs particularly CBTH. We also argue that, despite the uncertainty of effectiveness of community-based conservation from the beginning, due to the pre-history of conflicts, governments tend to rely upon bottom-up approach that utilize the effort of local communities in conserving wildlife rather than ineffective command-and-control policies. On the other hand, local communities cooperate and participate in CBTH due to power-imbalance between strong governments and weak communities who live closely with wildlife. We finally elaborate the process of CBTH and identify factors that determine the outcomes of CBTH programs in developing countries. We examine the effect of a large scale innovative smart-phone-aided monitoring program implemented in over 28000 government schools for improving teacher’s attendance and school performance in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, Pakistan. We find ideal conditions for a natural experiment by utilizing nationally representative survey that enables us to create treatment and control areas. Our findings suggest that the program has improved teacher’s attendance by nearly 8% in the year immediately following the program. However, this effect decreases by nearly half after two years of the program introduction. We also find the program’s direct effect on the enrolled children’s test performance at home. Enrolled children’s standardized Reading, Math and English ability in monitored schools has improved significantly by 0.07, 0.13 and 0.11 standard deviation points respectively at the lower (0-5) grades. There is slight improvement in the standardized test performance of higher grade children. The program also increases the probability of children enrollment into government schools. Our results are robust on different specifications and sub-samples of schools and districts clusters.Chapter 1: Does Community Inclusion in Protected Areas’ Governance Reduce Threat to Biodiversity? A Cross Country Analysis Chapter 2: A Model of Collaborative Governance for Community-based Trophy-Hunting Programs in Developing Countries Chapter 3: Teachers’ Monitoring and Schools’ Performance: Evidence from Public Schools in PakistandoctoralpublishedInayat ULLAH

Controlling the Coverage of Wireless Sensors Network Using Coverage in Block Algorithm

This research investigate the modeling of Blocks, Present in the sensing field and its impact in the computation of coverage path in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The solutions of these problems are proposed using techniques from Approximation algorithm. In order to accomplish the designated task successfully, sensors need to actuate, compute and disseminate the acquired information amongst them. Intuitively, coverage denotes the quality of sensing of a sensor node. While a sensor senses. It needs to communicate with its neighboring sensor nodes in order to disseminate the acquired data. That is where connectivity comes in to place. In fact, coverage and connectivity together measure the quality of service (QoS) of a sensor network. Coverage and connectivity in wireless sensor networks are not unrelated problems. Therefore, the goal of an optimal sensor deployment strategy is to have a globally connected network, while optimizing coverage at the same time. By optimizing coverage, the deployment strategy would guarantee that optimum area in the sensing field is covered by sensor, as required by the underlying application, whereas by ensuring that the network is connected, it is ensured that the sensed information is transmitted to other nodes and possibly to a centralized base station (called sink) which makes valuable decision for the application. Many recent and ongoing research in sensor networks focus on optimizing coverage and connectivity by optimizing node placement strategy, minimizing number of nodes to guarantee required degree of coverage, maximizing network lifetime by minimizing energy usage, computing the most and least sensed path in the given region and so on. To solve these optimizing problems related to coverage, exiting research uses mostly probabilistic technique based on random graph theory, randomized algorithm, computational geometry, and so on. Of particular interest to us is the problem of computing the coverage in block (CIB), where give