Integration of wirelessHART and STK600 development kit for data collection in wireless sensor networks

Offshore industry operates in world’s most challenging environment. Oil and gas facilities aim for continuous production to achieve the desired goals and a robust communication network is required to avoid production loses. The IEEE 802.15.4 specification has enabled low cost, low power Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) capable of providing robust communication and therefore utilises as a promising technology in oil and gas industry. The two most prominent industrial standards using the IEEE 802.15.4 radio technology are WirelessHART and ISA100.11a.These are currently the competitors in the automation and offshore industry. In this project, we have worked on Nivis WirelessHART development kit that has some on-board sensors. Our main goal is to integrate WirelessHART with external sensor board so that we can get the readings from external sensors and publish the data over web interface provided by Nivis. Since, Nivis WirelessHART field router is not an open source and un-programmable, therefore it is considered as a black box. Due to lack of such capabilities, we cannot connect external sensor directly to Nivis radio. We have chosen Atmel STK600-Atmega2560 development kit as an external sensor board. In order to establish communication between STK600 and Nivis WirelessHART, we have written an application in AVR studio and flash it to STK600 over the USB connection. We have implemented a serial communication protocol called Nivis simple API and made Nivis board able to get data from sensors interfacing STK600. Nivis radio will then forward this data to WirelessHART through HART gateway. Moreover, we have configured Monitoring Host to visualize the data from external sensors along with built-in sensors over the Monitoring Control System (MCS). Finally, we evaluate our implementation by various experiments and prove that the overall flow is working properly

Export potential of cottage industry: a case study of Sialkot (Pakistan)

Sialkot, the export city of Pakistan is earning $900 million per annum by exports. The major exports are the sports goods, surgical instruments, leather products, martial art instruments, musical instruments and sports wear. All these products are value-added by cottage industry. How the export potential of cottage industry in Sialkot may be increased,that is the question. The current paper estimated the export potential of the cottage industry by measuring it through Cobb-Douglas production function. The data has been collected from 354 cottage industrial units selected by random sampling. The results explain that labor, capital, experience and education of entrepreneur, and working conditions enhance the export potential of the units. The labor is more used in cottage industrial units as compared to capital so the elasticity of export production with respect to labor is higher as compared to capital. The football making units and other sports goods producing units use a minor ratio of capital and largely depend upon labor for production. Although leather and surgical producing units use higher ratio of capital in production. The education and experience of the entrepreneur also lead to increased export production. The better working condition increases the export production by raising the productivity of labor. The study proposes the education and training of the individuals involved in cottage industry and provision of good working conditions by the Export Promotion Bureau, Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and vocational training institutes in their respective areas. The surprising results of the study are that credit availed by the units decrease the export production while distance to market from the unit raises the export production. The relationship between credit and export production explains the misutilization of credit while positive association between distance to market and export production explains the involvement of more number of household members in production in the units away from city as compared to the units situated near to market or city. The misutilization of loaning is needed to be checked.Cottage industry, Pakistan, Exports, Cobb-Douglas production function, Sialkot

A New Weighting Scheme in Weighted Markov Model for Predicting the Probability of Drought Episodes

Drought is a complex stochastic natural hazard caused by prolonged shortage of rainfall. Several environmental factors are involved in determining drought classes at the specific monitoring station. Therefore, efficient sequence processing techniques are required to explore and predict the periodic information about the various episodes of drought classes. In this study, we proposed a new weighting scheme to predict the probability of various drought classes under Weighted Markov Chain (WMC) model. We provide a standardized scheme of weights for ordinal sequences of drought classifications by normalizing squared weighted Cohen Kappa. Illustrations of the proposed scheme are given by including temporal ordinal data on drought classes determined by the standardized precipitation temperature index (SPTI). Experimental results show that the proposed weighting scheme for WMC model is sufficiently flexible to address actual changes in drought classifications by restructuring the transient behavior of a Markov chain. In summary, this paper proposes a new weighting scheme to improve the accuracy of the WMC, specifically in the field of hydrology

Measuring Total Factor Productivity and Finding the Determinants of Total Factor Productivity at Sectoral Level: A Case Study of Pakistan

The current study has attempted to measure the total factor productivity at sectoral level. For this, the stock of capital series which was constructed by Kemal and Ahmad (1992) has been extended till 2013. The Solow residual has been calculated through growth accounting framework. The sectoral TFP is tested against the macroeconomic variables, such as human capital, openness of the economy, transfer of technology, financial development and development expenditure by the government. Using the ARDL methodology, it has been found that agriculture sector has the potential to grow provided there is investment in human capital and the agriculturists do acquire appropriate technology. The manufacturing sector TFP growth, on the other hand, not only requires further investment in human capital, it also requires diversification of the economy and its opening up to international trade transactions, financial development of the economy, and the use of technological advances in the field. The study also supports the Keynesian argument that government development expenditure is growth promoting. JCL Classification: O15, O33, O47 Keywords: Production Function, Total Factor Productivity, Growth Accounting Framework, Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model and Error Correction Mode

Psychological Adjustment and Academic Achievement among Adolescents

This study was studied that emotional and behavioural problems of young students who are directly related to their academic achievement and thus play a vital role in the development of young learners carrier. This study helped to fill a gap by conducting an exploration of psychological adjustment and academic achievement among adolescents. It also examined the gender differences on psychological adjustment and academic achievement. Purposive sampling technique was used in this study with sample size of one hundred and twenty (N=120) students, sixty female (N=60) and sixty (N=60) male, age ranged between 12-19 years, who had passed O’ level. The Reynolds Adolescents Adjustment Screening Inventory (RAASI) was used to measure psychological adjustment. Statistical Package for Social Sciences Version-20 (SPSS-20) was used for statistical analysis. First of all reliability of the scale was determined. Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Independent Sample T-Test were applied to find the quantitative facts of the study. Results revealed that there is negative correlation between psychological adjustment and academic achievement of students who passed O’ level. Independent Sample t-test revealed that there is significant difference on psychological adjustment among students who passed O’ level. The results also showed that female have more psychological adjustment as compared to male. Keywords: Psychological Adjustment; Academic Achievemen

Septic arthritis in a tertiary care hospital

Objectives: To study the epidemiological features of septic arthritis in the adult population and to identify the risk factors for mortality in septic arthritis.Methods: A five year reterospective study was performed on cases with septic arthritis admitted in our hospital between January 1999 and December 2004. Patients were identified according to ICD codes, 711.00. Data was recorded on a standardized data sheet and analyzed by SPSS 11.5 software.Results: A total of 116 patients were identified, 69 were male (59.5%) and 47 female (40.55%). Mean age of patients was 49.22 years. The most common presenting clinical features were joint swelling (99.1%) and fever (60.3%), Knee joint was the most common joint involved (65.5%) followed by hip (11.2%). Gram stains of synovial fluid was done in 67.2% of cases out of which 22.4% had positive stains. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common organism isolated from blood as well as synovial fluid (18.8%). Mean haemoglobin was 10.83gm/dl and 57.8% of patients had total leukocyte count less than 11,000/cumm. Platelet count was greater than 150,000/cumm in 90.5% patients. Hypertension, renal failure, chronic liver disease and elevated ESR were identified as some of the potential risk factors for higher mortality in a cohort with septic arthritis.CONCLUSION: Septic arthritis is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. These results highlight the importance of obtaining cultures before starting any treatment