On the Convergence of Blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) Technologies

The Internet of Things (IoT) technology will soon become an integral part of our daily lives to facilitate the control and monitoring of processes and objects and revolutionize the ways that human interacts with the physical world. For all features of IoT to become fully functional in practice, there are several obstacles on the way to be surmounted and critical challenges to be addressed. These include, but are not limited to cybersecurity, data privacy, energy consumption, and scalability. The Blockchain decentralized nature and its multi-faceted procedures offer a useful mechanism to tackle several of these IoT challenges. However, applying the Blockchain protocols to IoT without considering their tremendous computational loads, delays, and bandwidth overhead can let to a new set of problems. This review evaluates some of the main challenges we face in the integration of Blockchain and IoT technologies and provides insights and high-level solutions that can potentially handle the shortcomings and constraints of both IoT and Blockchain technologies.Comment: Includes 11 Pages, 3 Figures, To publish in Journal of Strategic Innovation and Sustainability for issue JSIS 14(1

Cities Hosting Holy Shrines: the legacy of Pilgrimage and its impact on Urban Form

This paper explores pilgrimage in the context of historic holy cities which contain at least one religious complex through which the ritual of pilgrimage takes place. One controversial tension in urban development process of holy cities is the tension between urban growth, on the one hand, and adapting city structure to the needs of pilgrims on the other hand. This paper investigates this issue by referring to experiences of two major holy cities in of Mecca and Mashhad. Both cities are spiritual centers which host millions of pilgrims throughout year. The aim of this paper is to analyze the process of city center transformation in both cities and monitor different policies and interventions that shaped their morphologies up to now. Through historical analysis of urban form, flow of pilgrims has affected the morphology of both cities in similar ways. Accordingly policies and interventions by local officials have shaped the urban center in three similar ways: enlargement and expansion of shrine, vehicular access to shrine, and real-estate speculation. İn the absence of protective and preventive codes and policies both Mecca and Mashhad have lost their historical urban fabric and their cultural patrimonies. Their traditional urban scape and prominence of shrine has been substituted by high rise mega projects. İn a similar way their local crafts and small-scale retails have been replaced by global retail chain

Regeneration ability and genetic transformation of root type chicory (Cichorium intybus var. sativum)

To develop an efficient protocol for shoot regeneration of root chicory (Cichorium intybus var. sativum), some factors, including different concentrations of plant growth regulators in Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium, type of explants and genotypes were evaluated. Initiation of callusing were best achieved in MS medium supplemented with 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) (0.1 mg l-1) plus 6-Benzylaminopurine (6-BAP) (1 mg l-1), indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) (0.01 mg l-1) plus 6-BAP (1.0 mg l-1), and IAA (0.5 mg l-1) plus (0.5 mg l-1) 6-BAP combinations on leaf and cotyledon explants. Explant-derived calli were able to produce multiple adventitious shoots in MS medium containing IAA (0.5 mg l-1) plus 6-BAP (0.5 mg l-1). MS medium containing indole-3-butylric acid IBA (1 mgl-1) efficiently induced rooting on elongated shoots. Various responses to the number of generated shoots were observed when regeneration abilities of different chicory cultivars were examined. Among root and “Witloof” cultivars, ‘Melci’ and ‘Hera’ belong to the root cultivars and exhibited higher shoot regeneration ability. Using the optimized regeneration method, genetic transformation of ‘Melci’ with Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain C58C1 RifR (pGV2260) (pTJK136) was successfully carried out. Histochemical GUS assay, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of putative transformed plants confirmed successful integration of the T-DNA into the chicory genome. Expression of the neomycine phosphotransferase (NPTII) in the regenerated plants was also shown by well-developed roots on root inducing medium containing 100 mg l-1 kanamycin. This simple, efficient and reproducible protocol could be useful for inducing somaclonal variation and genetic modification of root chicory cultivars to broaden genetic variation and transferring of important genes

X-ray diffraction study of cadmium hydroxyapatite

Solid solutions of cadmium and calcium hydroxyapatite [Ca10−x Cdx (PO4)6 (OH)2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 10)] were synthesized by a wet process in a basic medium. The lattice dimensions of these compounds vary linearly with the atom percent cadmium. The distribution of the calcium and cadmium ions between two non- equivalent crystallographic sites, (1) and (2), were determined by the Rietveld method. The site-occupancy factors of atoms indicate a slight preference of cadmium for site (2) in the apatite structure

CAS-BUS: A scalable and reconfigurable test access mechanism for systems on a chip

This paper describes CAS-BUS, a P1500 compatible Test Access Mechanism for Systems on a Chip. The TAM architecture is made up of a Core Access Switch (CAS) and a test bus. The TAM characteristics are its flexibility, scalability and reconfigurability. A CAS generator has been developed, and some results are provided in the paper

Creating mirror-mirror quantum correlations in optomechanics

We study the transfer of quantum correlations between two movable mirrors of two Fabry-P\'erot cavities separated via broadband squeezed light and coupled via photon hopping process. We investigate the transfer of quantum correlations from EPR entangled squeezed light to the movable mirrors. We show that Gaussian quantum steering remains lower than entanglement. We employ Gaussian quantum steering to characterize the steerability between the two mechanical modes. The logarithmic negativity is used as the witness of quantum entanglement and Gaussian quantum discord gives the measure of all non classical correlations including entanglement. We conclude that the transfer of quantum correlations is optimal for a strong optomechanical coupling and decreases with the thermal effects. We also conclude that steering, entanglement and discord are directly related to photon hopping coupling and the squeezing parameter

Exergy and economic investigation of different strategies of hybrid systems consisting of gas turbine (GT) and solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC)

Gas turbines and solid oxide fuel cells can be combined in two different strategies to create a new high-efficiency hybrid system. In most hybrid systems, the fuel cell is located directly before the combustion chamber (pressurized type) or after the turbine (atmospheric type). The indirect hybrid system is another compound that has been less studied. In this system, the fuel cell and the gas turbine cycle are located in two separate cycles and heat exchange was done by a heat exchanger. The main purpose of this article is to compare the exergy and economic performance of direct and indirect hybrid systems. The results show that the direct hybrid system with pressurized fuel cell has better performance than the other two types of hybrid system. High electrical efficiency, low rate of irreversibility and pollution, and low cost of electricity generation, as well as appropriate cost of purchase, installation and system setup, are the characteristics of this type of hybrid systems. Analyzes of this study showed that the only positive feature of direct atmospheric fuel cell systems is high production capacity and indirect hybrid systems are less efficient than direct systems