Design and implementation of a cost-aware and smart oyster mushroom cultivation system

Mushrooms are a nutritious food source, which can play a crucial role in providing affordable sources of proteins, vitamins and minerals for people worldwide, but their cultivation requires extensive training and considerable relevant expertise in order to fine-tune multiple environmental parameters. Internally displaced people in the Northern regions of Syria rely on very small-scale traditional oyster mushroom production, which cannot meet their local demand. Many international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working for Syrian refugees, work on mushroom cultivation projects. They have reported significant difficulties and challenges in mushroom cultivation amongst the targeted beneficiaries. Therefore, the two main questions driving this research are: (1) How can organic mushroom cultivation be promoted using a robust and affordable intelligent mushroom farming system? (2) How can organic mushroom farming practices be simplified to support internally displaced and refugee Syrians? This research evaluates the process of automating mushroom cultivation by designing and implementing a smart oyster (Pleurotus ostreatus) mushroom farming system to remotely monitor and manage environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, air quality and illumination, inside the farm. Furthermore, ready and dedicated user-friendly web interfaces were also implemented to enable farmers to remotely monitor and manage their farms through the Internet. As a result, a dependable and cost-effective intelligent oyster mushroom cultivation system was designed and implemented in this work. The system includes remote monitoring and management via user-friendly interfaces. This simplifies mushroom cultivation for not only refugees and displaced communities, but also for mushroom farmers in low-income countries. This work can contribute to the eradication of poverty and hunger, in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals one and two

Reusable knowledge in security requirements engineering: a systematic mapping study

Security is a concern that must be taken into consideration starting from the early stages of system development. Over the last two decades, researchers and engineers have developed a considerable number of methods for security requirements engineering. Some of them rely on the (re)use of security knowledge. Despite some existing surveys about security requirements engineering, there is not yet any reference for researchers and practitioners that presents in a systematic way the existing proposals, techniques, and tools related to security knowledge reuse in security requirements engineering. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by looking into drawing a picture of the literature on knowledge and reuse in security requirements engineering. The questions we address are related to methods, techniques, modeling frameworks, and tools for and by reuse in security requirements engineering. We address these questions through a systematic mapping study. The mapping study was a literature review conducted with the goal of identifying, analyzing, and categorizing state-of-the-art research on our topic. This mapping study analyzes more than thirty approaches, covering 20 years of research in security requirements engineering. The contributions can be summarized as follows: (1) A framework was defined for analyzing and comparing the different proposals as well as categorizing future contributions related to knowledge reuse and security requirements engineering; (2) the different forms of knowledge representation and reuse were identified; and (3) previous surveys were updated. We conclude that most methods should introduce more reusable knowledge to manage security requirements

Using the AMAN-DA method to generate security requirements: a case study in the maritime domain

Security requirements are known to be “the most difficult of requirements types” and potentially the ones causing the greatest risk if they are not correct. One approach to requirements elicitation is based on the reuse of explicit knowledge. AMAN-DA is a requirement elicitation method that reuses encapsulated knowledge in security and domain ontologies to produce security requirements specifications. The main research question addressed in this paper is to what extent is AMAN-DA able to generate domain-specific security requirements? Following a well-documented process, a case study related to the maritime domain was undertaken with the goal to demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of AMAN-DA for the elicitation and analysis of domain-specific security requirements. The usefulness of the method was also evaluated with a group of 12 experts. The paper demonstrates the elicitation of domain-specific security requirements by presenting the AMAN-DA method and its application. It describes the evaluation and reports some significant results and their implications for practice and future research, especially for the field of knowledge reuse in requirements engineering

Microwave chemical durability of an iron-rich glass-ceramic dedicated for high-level radioactive waste

This study investigates the effect of crystallization time (t _c ) in the structure of an iron-rich glass-ceramic (GC) dedicated for high-level radioactive waste (HLW), ceramized by nucleation–crystallization treatment at 790 °C for 2 h and 950 °C, for different periods ranging from 3 to 12 h. Density, XRD, SEM, FTIR, and Microwave chemical durability results are shown. Considering all the materials, Archimedes’ density is between 2.607 and 2.634 g cm ^−3 . Both XRD and SEM analyses revealed the development of two main crystalline phases, spodumene (LiAlSi _2 O _6 ) and (Zr, Ln) molybdate La _2 Zr _3 (MoO _4 ) _9 , during the heat treatment. These phases regularly grow by the increase of crystallization time. They are known as radionuclides’ sequestration minerals. FTIR analysis confirms the complex GCs chemical composition. The microwave chemical durability test performed on GCs crystallized at t _c = 9 h was conducted to evaluate their chemical stability. The leachates of the elements: Al, Fe, Mg, Li, Mo, Na, Si, and Zr were analyzed by ICP-OES. RL _i values of Al, Mg, Mo, and Zr elements representing the radioactive waste (RW), vary between 2.3218 × 10 ^−8 and 2.9204 × 10 ^−8 kg m ^−2 d. For Fe and Li, were slightly lower. However, RL _Si was highest reaching 1.7457 × 10 ^−6 kg m ^−2 d ^−1 . The elementary percentages extracted during the dissolution test for all elements are less than 0.5%, which makes our material chemically stable. Its resistance to such an aggressive dissolution test makes it a good candidate for the confinement of some RW elements

Study of leaching of a 2M-Zirconolite (Ca0,83Ce0,17ZrTi1,66Al0.34O7) in acidic and basic media

Zirconolite is a mineral intended for actinides elements confinement and is known for its good chemical durability. In this work, 2M-zirconolite, with the chemical formula: Ca0,83Ce0,17ZrTi1,66Al0.34O7 have been synthesized at 1400 o C by the metallurgical route at a laboratory scale. This stoechiometry corresponds to a CeO2 loading of 8.61 m.%. Ce is employed as an actinide surrogate. The effect of both pH and temperature on the chemical durability of this mineral has been studied. Phase identification and micrography observations have been done by X-ray diffraction, scanning electronic microscopy, and Fourrier transform infra-red spectroscopy. The end-product has a monophasic structure of 2M-zirconolite. Its density is about 4.013 g/cm3 , and its relative density is of 96 %TD. It has a microhardeness of 370 MPa. The Ce behavior in leaching media of extreme pH values: acidic medium (pH = 2) and basic medium (pH = 12), at 23 o C and 70 o C, shows that the Ce dissolution speeds are faster at 70 o C compared with those obtained at 23 o C. The 2M-zirconolite matrice presently studied appears to have a good chemical durabilit

Study of the effect of Ca/Mg alkali-oxides ratio on the structure of a glass-ceramic based on an aluminosilicated glass containing 2wt.% of zirconolite crystalline phase

New nuclear glass-ceramics are extensively studied for the radioactive waste confinement, due to the double confinement conferred by the glass-ceramics. In this study, a glass-ceramic constituted by an aluminosilicate glass in the system: SiO2-Al2O3-CaO-MgOZrO2-TiO2, containing 2wt.% of Ca0.83Ce0.17ZrTi1.66Al0.34O7 zirconolite, has been synthesized by the discontinuous method. Cerium, an actinide surrogate is introduced both in the glass and ceramic phases. The synthesis is performed by a double melting at 1350 °C, followed by a nucleation at 564°C, during 2 h, and a crystal growth at 1010°C during 3 h. Then effect of Ca / Mg ratio on the distribution of the crystalline network in the material was studied for Ca / Mg ratios ranging from 0.4 to 5.5. For the whole of the materials, Archimedes density is about 2.80 g/cm3 . X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis shows that the increase of Ca/Mg ratio leads to the increase of aluminosilicated crystalline phases with high Ca contents; the materials molar volumes remaining constant. The zirconolite phase is not affected by these additive aluminosilicated phases. The scanning electron microscopy analysis (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis confirmed these results; and shows the uniformity of distribution of the ceramics in the bulk of the material

Capturing security requirements using essential use cases (EUCs)

Capturing security requirements is a complex process, but it is crucial to the success of a secure software product. Hence, requirements engineers need to have security knowledge when eliciting and analyzing the security requirements from business requirements. However, the majority of requirements engineers lack such knowledge and skills, and they face difficulties to capture and understand many security terms and issues. This results in capturing inaccurate, inconsistent and incomplete security requirements that in turn may lead to insecure software systems. In this paper, we describe a new approach of capturing security requirements using an extended Essential Use Cases (EUCs) model. This approach enhances the process of capturing and analyzing security requirements to produce accurate and complete requirements. We have evaluated our prototype tool using usability testing and assessment of the quality of our generated EUC security patterns by security engineering experts