Design an Optimum Highway Route using Remote Sensing Data and GIS-Based Least Cost Path Model, Case of Minya-Ras Ghareb and Minya-Wahat-Bawiti Highway Routes, Egypt

The traditional method of aligning highways is a tedious, time-consuming process, and needs a lot of manual work, expensive consuming and complicated process, where numerous environmental issues need to be addressed. The problem is exacerbated where the alignment is influenced by the location of services, existing roads, and buildings. Therefore, there is a great need to adopt new technologies that save time and money in designing and assessment of highway paths. Remote Sensing and GIS make the highway alignment most appropriate avoiding vulnerable high-risk zones such as sand dunes, stream crossing, fault zones, etc….in addition to considering environmental protection constraints and cost savings. It needs less manpower, less time consuming and less cost. In this context, a survey was conducted to determine the factors that affect the process of choosing the path of roads through the previous literature and a panel of experts. Minya Ras-Gharib road in the Eastern Desert of Egypt and Minya Wahat Bawiti road in the Western Desert of Egypt as a case study. Remotely sensing techniques, Landsat 8 and digital elevation models were used to produce land use maps, sand dunes, existing roads, slopes, and flood sites. In addition, thematic maps such as rock type, faults, protectorates. Cost factors were determined and cost surface for each factor was established, standardized, weighed and aggregated based on previous literature. A pairwise comparison is used to determine the weight of factors. These weighted factors /criteria maps were combined to create the least cost surface map. Four visions were modeled: an economic vision, an environmental vision, an equal vision, and economy only vision. A comparison was made between the four-route using the DEFINITE software.The equal-weights route was the best route. A comparison was made between the equal-weight route and the existing route.The results of the comparison show that the recommended route save about 48% for the road of Minya Ras Gharib and save about 33 % for the road of Minya Wahat Bawiti compared to the existing road, in addition to saving the time, effort and cost

The Effect of Operating Conditions on the Performance of a Vacuum Membrane Distillation Unit Using PES Flat Sheet Membrane

The desalination of seawater is considered a promising source of potable water in Egypt. Vacuum Membrane Distillation (VMD) is a new separation technology based on the evaporation of saline water through hydrophobic porous membranes by applying vacuum pressure on the permeate side of the membrane to desalinate brackish or seawater. A lab scale experimental model was constructed and operated using hydrophobic polyethersulfone flat sheet membrane (PES) with effective area of 0.049 m2, pore size 0.2-0.4 µm and thickness 120-160 µm. Salt concentration ranging from 5000 ppm to 35000 ppm aqueous NaCl. Resultant permeate flux was measured for the following operating conditions: feed flow temperature (40-50-60-70 °C), flowrate (1-1.2-1.4-1.6 L/min), and vacuum pressure (0.2-0.3-0.4-0.5 Bar). Results showed an increase in permeate flux due to increased temperature, flow rate and vacuum pressure, while it decreased with the increase in salt concentration. The flux value obtained reached 15 kg/m2.hr at T= 40°C, vacuum pressure= 0.4 bar, TDS= 5000ppm, and flow rate 1 L/min, while it reached 29 kg/m2.hr at  T= 70°C, vacuum pressure= 0.5 bar, TDS= 35,000 ppm, and flow rate 1.6 L/min. Electric power consumed by the system reached 0.612 Kwh at  T=70°C, TDS =5000ppm, vacuum pressure = 0.4 bar, and feed flow rate 1 L/min. Keywords: VMD, desalination, vacuum pressure, hydrophobic membrane

5G Micro-Cell Deployment in Coexistence with Fixed Services

This study deals with the coexistence between 5G networks and Fixed Services (FS), where fixed links (FL) is one application that is considered. To meet the demanding requirements of 5G systems, it is expected that 5G systems will require spectrum in high frequency bands. Most likely, these systems will have to share spectrum with fixed services. This thesis assesses the mutual interference between a micro-cell deployment and the fixed link, and examines the feasibility of the coexistence based on the interference requirements. The results indicate that the downlink (DL) interference that 5G generates towards the fixed link, surpasses the protection criteria for primary-secondary sharing in a co-channel case. However, the interference generated by the uplink (UL) transmission of the 5G system stays below the required threshold when an antenna array composed of 16 elements is used. In downlink (DL) communication, coexistence conditions were improved when lower transmit power was used. Thus, coexistence could be feasible in case the micro-layer was used only in UL. Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) systems could be used in 5G communication systems to enable this feature

Minimizing Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions of Aging Buildings

AbstractThe building sector in the United States is responsible for 41% of energy consumption and 39% of carbon footprint while the majority of energy consumption and carbon footprint are caused by aging buildings which represent 70% of existing buildings in the United States. The energy consumption of aging buildings can be significantly reduced by identifying and implementing green building upgrade measures based on available budgets. Aging buildings are often in urgent need for upgrading to improve their operational, economic, and environmental performance. This paper presents the development of an optimization model that is capable of identifying the optimal selection of building upgrade measures to minimize energy consumption of aging buildings while complying with limited upgrade budgets and building operational performance. This optimization model is designed to estimate building energy consumption using energy simulation software packages such as eQuest and it is integrated with databases of building products. This optimization model performs analysis of replacing existing building fixtures and equipment during the optimization computations to identify the optimal replacement of building products that minimizes building energy consumption and carbon emissions. The model is designed to provide detailed results for building owners and operators, which include specifications for the recommended upgrade measures and their location in the building; upgrade cost; expected energy, operational, and life-cycle cost savings; and expected payback period. This paper illustrates the new and unique capabilities of the developed optimization model

Engineering Approaches to Control Activity and Selectivity of Enzymes for Multi-Step Catalysis

Enzymes are desirable catalysts as they may exhibit high activity, high selectivity, and may be easily engineered. Additionally, enzymes can be mass-produced recombinantly making them a potentially less expensive option than their organic or inorganic counterparts. As a result, they are being used more in industrial applications making their relevance ubiquitous. In this work, various engineering approaches were developed to control the activity and selectivity of enzymes for multi-step catalysis. Unlike nature, many industrial processes require multiple steps to produce the desired product, which is both timely and expensive. Through the use of enzymes, biosynthesis can be used to develop efficient multi-step catalytic cascades. The majority of this work focused on engineering a hyperthermophilic enzyme from the aldo-keto reductase (AKR) superfamily, alcohol dehydrogenase D (AdhD) from Pyrococcus furiosus, to develop approaches to control activity and selectivity. As the AKR superfamily contains many unifying characteristics, such as a conserved catalytic tetrad, (α/β)8-barrel quaternary fold, conserved cofactor binding pocket, and varying substrate loops, the approaches developed here can be applied to many enzymes. AKR members participate in a broad range of redox reactions, such as those involving aldehydes, hydrocarbons, xenobiotics, and many more, and are necessary in physiological processes in all living systems, making these enzymes industrially relevant. AdhD in particular can oxidize alcohols or reduce aldehydes/ketones in the presence of NAD(P)(H). Furthermore, the tools utilized here are modular and can be used to develop pathways with enzymes from different superfamilies’ to expand their current capabilities. In our initial engineering efforts, AdhD cofactor selectivity was broadened or reversed through site directed mutations or insertions in substrate loop B, on the back side of the cofactor binding pocket. To further examine how substrate loops affect cofactor selectivity, allosteric control was added to AdhD through the insertion of a calcium-dependent repeat-in-toxin domain from Bordetella pertussis. Through the chimeric protein, β-AdhD, we demonstrated that the addition of calcium shifts cofactor selectivity in real-time, reminiscent of a protein dimmer. Our next focus shifted towards unnatural amino acid incorporation to add an extra level of selectivity to AdhD. This was done by merging the properties of AdhD and an organic catalyst, TEMPO, for selective alcohol oxidation. We also demonstrated the ability to impart enzymatic selectivity onto an organic catalyst. This was done both in solution and in AdhD hydrogels for added functionality. The next study focused on increasing catalytic efficiency while retaining AdhD structure by engineering the microenvironment of AdhD with supercharged superfolder GFP (sfGFP). The complex interplay between salt, pH, and protein charge was studied and it was determined that catalysis is a function of protein charge, which can affect apparent local ionic strength. The final study focused on utilizing the previous tools examined to engineer substrate channeling in a multi-step cascade with hexokinase II (HK2), sfGFP, and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD). In conclusion, we have utilized a myriad of tools to develop engineering approaches to regulate AdhD activity and selectivity. These tools were then extended to engineer substrate channeling in a three-enzyme system. These approaches are modular and provide a foundation for the development of multi-step catalytic cascades

Fine-Grained Access Control for Microservices

Microservices-based applications are considered to be a promising paradigm for building large-scale digital systems due to its flexibility, scalability, and agility of development. To achieve the adoption of digital services, applica-tions holding personal data must be secure while giving end-users as much control as possible. On the other hand, for software developers, adoption of a security solution for microservices requires it to be easily adaptable to the application context and requirements while fully exploiting reusability of se-curity components. This paper proposes a solution that targets key security challenges of microservice-based applications. Our approach relies on a co-ordination of security components, and offers a fine-grained access control in order to minimise the risks of token theft, session manipulation, and a ma-licious insider; it also renders the system resilient against confused deputy at-tacks. This solution is based on a combination of OAuth 2 and XACML open standards, and achieved through reusable security components integrat-ed with microservices