The implementation of the Tsunami Livelihood Restoration Project: Progress report 2005

Natural disasters / Rehabilitation / Living conditions / Farmers’ associations / Sri Lanka / Hambantota District

Anicut systems in Sri Lanka: The case of the Upper Walawe River Basin

Water resources / Tanks / Water use / River basins / Hydrology / Irrigation systems / Water shortage / Crops / Doemstic water / Fuelwood / Cultivation / Deforestation / Water supply / Economic development / Water management / Institutions / Land reform

In silico investigation of the mechanism of ricin-catalysed depurination reaction and design of novel ricin inhibitors

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.Ricin is a dimeric enzyme found in the castor bean plant. It is extremely toxic with a fatal dose for humans ranging from 0.1-1.0 ug/kg. This has lead to its use as a biological weapon. Cell death is caused when ricin ceases the protein synthesis by removing a specific adenine (A-4324) of the GAGA tetra loop of 28S ribosomal RNA. Despite this destructive feature, ricin has been touted as a potential therapeutic agent where applications such as immunotoxins to treat cancer, AIDS and other diseases are actively being pursued. However, the prime challenge in such applications is the non specific cytotoxicity of ricin, which cannot currently be treated due to the absence of an effective antidote. The primary objective of this thesis is to describe the catalytic mechanism of ricin using computational reaction dynamics. For an accurate simulation of the ricin-catalysed reaction, a reasonable model of the target natural substrate is required

Balancing irrigation and hydropower: Case study from Southern Sri Lanka

Reservoirs / Dams / Hydroelectric schemes / Economic analysis / Canals / Irrigation scheduling / Cropping systems / Case studies

Wastewater agriculture in Kurunegala City, Sri Lanka

Wastewater irrigation / Irrigation canals / Rivers / Urban agriculture / Farmers associations / Rain / Soil properties / Rice / Crop management / Fertilizers / Paddy fields / Sri Lanka / Kurunegala City / Beu Ela / Wan Ela

The Device Centric Communication System for 5G Networks

The Fifth Generation Communication (5G) networks have several functional features such as: Massive Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO), Device centric data and voice support, Smarter-device communications, etc. The objective for 5G networks is to gain the 1000x more throughput, 10x spectral efficiency, 100 x more energy efficiency than existing technologies. The 5G system will provide the balance between the Quality of Experience (QoE) and the Quality of Service (QoS), without compromising the user benefit. The data rate has been the key metric for wireless QoS; QoE deals with the delay and throughput. In order to realize a balance between the QoS and QoE, we propose a cellular Device centric communication methodology for the overlapping network coverage area in the 5G communication system. The multiple beacon signals mobile tower refers to an overlapping network area, and a user must be forwarded to the next location area. To resolve this issue, we suggest the user centric methodology (without Base Station interface) to handover the device in the next area, until the users finalize the communication. The proposed method will reduce the signalling cost and overheads for the communication

Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (Essential EAFM) training and TOT in Sri Lanka

This report presents presentations from representatives of 12 countries, key outcomes and recommendations for the future

A database optimization model with quantitative benchmark

Query optimization and indexing have an immense impact on database optimization. This has been considered in many different perspectives which provide several different solutions in each case. The purpose of this paper is to primarily provide a comprehensive review and discussion of the core problems through the research on query optimization technology and indexing, based on a number of optimization techniques commonly used in the general approach of a query. A new database optimization model is designed and experiments show that this model can significantly reduce the amount of query execution time to improve the optimization efficiency. Regardless of research on the database optimization model, significant work has been done to comparatively evaluate three scenarios; non-optimized query, optimized query without following any optimization standard, and optimized query via proposed optimization model using the same experimental methodology. Further, this paper describes a benchmark that was developed specifically for the purpose of measuring the quantitative evaluations of the proposed database optimization model

Wireless Energy Harvesting Assisted Two-Way Cognitive Relay Networks: Protocol Design and Performance Analysis

This paper analyzes the effects of realistic relay transceiver on the outage probability and throughput of a two-way relay cognitive network that is equipped with an energy-harvesting relay. In this paper, we configure the network with two wireless power transfer policies and two bidirectional relaying protocols. Furthermore, the differences in receiver structure of relay node that can be time switching or power splitting structure are also considered to develop closed-form expressions of outage and throughput of the network providing that the delay of transmission is limited. Numerical results are presented to corroborate our analysis for all considered network configurations. This paper facilitates us not only to quantify the degradation of outage probability and throughput due to the impairments of realistic transceiver but also to provide an insight into practical effects of specified configuration of power transfer policy, relaying protocol, and receiver structure on outage and throughput. For instance, the system with multiple access broadcast protocol and the power splitting-based receiver architecture achieves ceiling throughout higher than that of the transmission rate of source nodes. On the contrary, a combination of dual-source energy transfer policy and the time division broadcast protocol is contributed the highest level of limiting factor in terms of transceiver hardware impairments on the network throughput.</p