Nature-inspired Cuckoo Search Algorithm for Side Lobe Suppression in a Symmetric Linear Antenna Array

In this paper, we proposed a newly modified cuckoo search (MCS) algorithm integrated with the Roulette wheel selection operator and the inertia weight controlling the search ability towards synthesizing symmetric linear array geometry with minimum side lobe level (SLL) and/or nulls control. The basic cuckoo search (CS) algorithm is primarily based on the natural obligate brood parasitic behavior of some cuckoo species in combination with the Levy flight behavior of some birds and fruit flies. The CS metaheuristic approach is straightforward and capable of solving effectively general N-dimensional, linear and nonlinear optimization problems. The array geometry synthesis is first formulated as an optimization problem with the goal of SLL suppression and/or null prescribed placement in certain directions, and then solved by the newly MCS algorithm for the optimum element or isotropic radiator locations in the azimuth-plane or xy-plane. The study also focuses on the four internal parameters of MCS algorithm specifically on their implicit effects in the array synthesis. The optimal inter-element spacing solutions obtained by the MCS-optimizer are validated through comparisons with the standard CS-optimizer and the conventional array within the uniform and the Dolph-Chebyshev envelope patterns using MATLABTM. Finally, we also compared the fine-tuned MCS algorithm with two popular evolutionary algorithm (EA) techniques include particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithms (GA)

Isolation of keratinophilic fungi and aerobic actinomycetes from park soils in Gorgan, North of Iran

Background: Keratinophilic fungi are a group of fungi that colonize in various keratinous substrates and degrade them to the components with low molecular weight. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of keratinophilic fungi and aerobic Actinomycetes in soil of city parks in Gorgan. Objectives: In this study, we surveyed the city park soils of Gorgan (a northern province of Iran) to determine the identities and diversity of soil aerobic Actinomycetes, keratinophilic and non-keratinophilic fungi. Materials and Methods: A total of 244 soil samples were collected from 22 diferent parks of Gorgan, North of Iran. The samples were collected from the superfcial layer with depth not exceeding than 0-10 cm in sterile polyethylene bags. We used hair bait technique for isolation keratinophilic fungi. The colonies identifed by macroscopic and microscopic characterization after slide culturing. Actinomycetes were isolated by antibiotic dilution methods and detected by using physiological tests such as Lysozyme, Casein, Xanthine, Hypoxanthine, Gelatin, Urea Broth, and modifed acid-fast stain. Results: Totally, 75 isolates of aerobic Actinomycetes were detected that Actinomadura madurae and Nocardia asteroides were the most prevalent strains, with 14.66 and 28% prevalence respectively. Microsporum gypseum was more frequent than other keratinophilic fungi (22.96%) and Aspergillus spp. was the most species of saprophyte fungi (15.92%). Conclusions: This study showed that the collected soil from studied areas was rich of keratinophilic fungi and Actinomycetes, therefore hygiene protocol should be taken to prevent the spread of pathogenic and saprophytes fungi in the environment of susceptible person. © 2013, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences

Textile Diamond Dipole and Artificial Magnetic Conductor Performance under Bending, Wetness and Specific Absorption Rate Measurements

Textile diamond dipole and Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) have been proposed and tested under wearable and body centric measurements. The proposed antenna and AMC sheet are entirely made of textiles for both the substrate and conducting parts, thus making it suitable for wearable communications. Directive radiation patterns with high gain are obtained with the proposed AMC sheet, hence minimizing the radiation towards the human body. In this study, wearable and body centric measurements are investigated which include bending, wetness and Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). Bending is found not to give significant effect to the antenna and AMC performance, as opposed to wetness that yields severe performance distortion. However, the original performance is retrieved once the antenna and AMC dried. Moreover, notable SAR reduction is achieved with the introduction of the AMC sheet, which is appropriate to reduce the radiation that penetrates into human flesh

A novel green antenna phase-shift system with data acquisition boards

A novel green phase shifter system is proposed in this research. The system is developed by a combination of reconfigurable beam steering antennas and data acquisition (DAQ) boards. A combination of two reconfigurable beam steering antennas, located side-by-side, forms a spatial configuration structure with a fabricated ‘green’ element plank of rice husk placed in between. The concept of a spatial configuration technique has been ‘mutated’ by shifting the structure of spiral feed line and aperture slots of first beam steering antenna by as much as 45 ◦ . The PIN diode switches connected to the DAQ boards enable the intelligent capability of the spatial antennas. The activation of certain degree radiation patterns of either the first beam steering antenna or the second beam steering antenna depends on the memory of the DAQ boards — Beam Manager. When an intruder comes from the cardinal angles of 0◦/ 360◦, 90◦, 180◦, or 270◦, its range and angles’ location will be automatically detected by the first antenna through the output ports of the 1st DAQ: P1.0, P1.1, P1.2, and P1.3. The second antenna is then activated by the output ports of the 2nd DAQ: P2.0 up to P2.3, to adaptively maneuver the beam towards four different ordinal directions of 45◦, 135◦, 225◦, and 315◦

Reply to "Comment on `Validity of path thermodynamic description of reactive systems: Microscopic simulations'

The Comment's author argues that a correct description of reactive systems should incorporate the explicit interaction with reservoirs, leading to a unified system-reservoirs entity. However, this proposition has two major flaws. Firstly, as we will emphasize, this entity inherently follows a thermodynamic equilibrium distribution. In the Comment, no indication is provided on how to maintain such a system-reservoirs entity in a non-equilibrium state. Secondly, contrary to the author's claim, the inclusion of system-reservoir interaction in traditional stochastic modeling of reactive systems does not automatically alter the limited applicability of path thermodynamics to problematic reactive systems. We will provide a simple demonstration to illustrate that certain elementary reactions may not involve any changes in reservoir components, which seems to have been overlooked by the author.Comment: To appear in Physical Review

Knudsen gas in a finite random tube: transport diffusion and first passage properties

We consider transport diffusion in a stochastic billiard in a random tube which is elongated in the direction of the first coordinate (the tube axis). Inside the random tube, which is stationary and ergodic, non-interacting particles move straight with constant speed. Upon hitting the tube walls, they are reflected randomly, according to the cosine law: the density of the outgoing direction is proportional to the cosine of the angle between this direction and the normal vector. Steady state transport is studied by introducing an open tube segment as follows: We cut out a large finite segment of the tube with segment boundaries perpendicular to the tube axis. Particles which leave this piece through the segment boundaries disappear from the system. Through stationary injection of particles at one boundary of the segment a steady state with non-vanishing stationary particle current is maintained. We prove (i) that in the thermodynamic limit of an infinite open piece the coarse-grained density profile inside the segment is linear, and (ii) that the transport diffusion coefficient obtained from the ratio of stationary current and effective boundary density gradient equals the diffusion coefficient of a tagged particle in an infinite tube. Thus we prove Fick's law and equality of transport diffusion and self-diffusion coefficients for quite generic rough (random) tubes. We also study some properties of the crossing time and compute the Milne extrapolation length in dependence on the shape of the random tube.Comment: 51 pages, 3 figure

Predicting Intermediate Storage Performance for Workflow Applications

Configuring a storage system to better serve an application is a challenging task complicated by a multidimensional, discrete configuration space and the high cost of space exploration (e.g., by running the application with different storage configurations). To enable selecting the best configuration in a reasonable time, we design an end-to-end performance prediction mechanism that estimates the turn-around time of an application using storage system under a given configuration. This approach focuses on a generic object-based storage system design, supports exploring the impact of optimizations targeting workflow applications (e.g., various data placement schemes) in addition to other, more traditional, configuration knobs (e.g., stripe size or replication level), and models the system operation at data-chunk and control message level. This paper presents our experience to date with designing and using this prediction mechanism. We evaluate this mechanism using micro- as well as synthetic benchmarks mimicking real workflow applications, and a real application.. A preliminary evaluation shows that we are on a good track to meet our objectives: it can scale to model a workflow application run on an entire cluster while offering an over 200x speedup factor (normalized by resource) compared to running the actual application, and can achieve, in the limited number of scenarios we study, a prediction accuracy that enables identifying the best storage system configuration

Enhancement the Performance of OFDM based on Multiwavelets Using Turbo Codes

In wireless communication systems, the main challenge is to provide a high data rate and reliable transmission over a frequency selective fading channel. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a very attractive technique for high data rate transmission with better bandwidth efficiency. In this paper, the effectiveness of turbo codes is utilized to develop a new approach for an OFDM system based on a Discrete Multiwavelet Critical-Sampling Transform (OFDM-DMWCST). The use of turbo coding in an OFDM-DMWCST system is useful in providing the desired performance at higher data rates. Two types of turbo codes were used in this work, i.e., Parallel Concatenated Convolutional Codes (PCCCs) and Serial Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SCCCs). In both types, the decoding is performed by the iterative decoding algorithm based on the log-MAP (Maximum A Posteriori) algorithm. The simulationresults showed that, the turbo-coded OFDM-DMWCST system achieves large coding gain with lower Bit-Error-Rate (BER), therefore, offering a higher data rate under different channel conditions. In addition, thePCCCs offer better performance than SCCCs

Combining image and point cloud segmentation to improve heritage understanding

Current 2D and 3D semantic segmentation frameworks are developed and trained on specific benchmark datasets, often rich of synthetic data, and when they are applied to complex and real-world heritage scenarios they offer much lower accuracy than expected. In this work, we present and demonstrate an early and late fusion of methods for semantic segmentation in cultural heritage applications. We rely on image datasets, point clouds and BIM models. The early fusion utilizes multi-view rendering to generate RGBD imagery of the scene. In contrast, the late fusion approach merges image-based segmentation with a Point Transformer applied to point clouds. Two scenarios are considered and inference results show that predictions are primarily influenced by whether the scene has a predominantly geometric or texture-based signature, underscoring the necessity of fusion methods