Characteristics of agent-based hierarchical diff-EDF schedulability over heterogeneous real-time Packet networks

Packet networks are currently enabling the integration of heterogeneous traffic with a wide range of characteristics that extend from video traffic with stringent QoS requirements to best-effort traffic requiring no guarantees. QoS guarantees can be provided in packet networks by the use of proper packet scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we propose a new priority assignment scheduling algorithm, Hierarchical Diff-EDF, which can meet the real-time needs while continuing to provide best effort service over heterogeneous network traffic environment. The Hierarchical Diff-EDF service meets the flow miss rate requirements through the combination of single step hierarchal scheduling for the different network flows and the admission control mechanism that detects the overload conditions to adjust packets' priorities. To examine the proposed scheduler, we introduced an attempt to provide an exact analytical solution. The attempt showed that the solution was apparently very complicated due to the high interdependences between the system queues' service. Hence, the use of simulation seems inevitable. A multi-agent simulation that takes the inspiration from object-oriented programming is adopted. The simulation itself is aimed to the construction of a set of elements which, when fully elaborated, define an agent system specification. When evaluating our proposed scheduler, it was extremely obvious that the Hierarchical Diff-EDF scheduler performs over both of the EDF and Diff-EDF schedulers

Modeling and implementation of photovoltaic modules for a DC-DC Boost Converter

A photovoltaic (PV) system is a renewable energy system intended to convert sunlight into the usable electricity. Due to the rapid world infrastructure development, the demand for electricity is increasing drastically. One of the promising energy resources is the PV. The required energy demand can be provided by the increase of PV system deployment. Thus, as part of the design, development and implementation of a new PV system, a system design simulation is essential. This is to ensure that the designed system works properly according to design specifications. For this reason, a PV mathematical model is necessary in the development process of the PV system especially in the MATLAB/Simulink software environment. With the developed PV model, the PV system design and simulation is made handy, thus escalates the future energy demand. This work describes the development of the PV mathematical model in the MATLAB/Simulink software environment based on the PV related equations. The equations are formed by the consideration of the equivalent circuit of PV cell. The developed PV model characteristics such as the Power-Voltage (P-V) and Current-Voltage (I-V) curves are obtained as the simulation output in MATLAB/Simulink. The obtained characteristics are compared to the actual PV model A 100W RNG-50D Renogy, as to verify the effectiveness and closeness of the developed PV model to the real PV module. In addition, in the simulation, a dc-dc boost converter is also designed and integrated with the PV model as to verify the PV module and capability as a PV power source. The simulation results with the dc-dc boost converter DC-DC integration have shown that the developed PV model is very effective to be used for the PV system simulation

Development Of Aquaponic System Using Solar Powered Control Pump

This paper describes the development of an aquaponic system using solar panel to control the water pump and air pump based on Peripheral Interface Controller (PIC) technology. Solar power is ideally can be used in Malaysia due to location factor and also give the benefit to the environment as renewable energy. It involves a combination of electrical, electronics and agriculture into one sustainable system which consists of a solar panel, inverter, water pump and air pump. The solar panel is the most cleanest ways to produce electricity. With the average output voltage is 12V while the maximum output voltage produce by the solar panel is 18 V. The voltage depends on light capture by solar panel. Weather can minimize the light capture by solar panel thus affect the overall performance. This project requires a substitution power grid with green energy from solar panel which an inverter is used to convert Direct Current (DC) to Alternate Current (AC) and to step up 12V to 110V or 240V. A microcontroller is used to control the operation of an aquaponic system for switching water pump, air pump, battery charge and discharge state. Based on observation, the output power from inverter has produced 65.55% efficiency and the average output voltage of the solar panel is 16.16 V

2D characterization of near-surface V P/V S: surface-wave dispersion inversion versus refraction tomography

International audienceThe joint study of pressure (P-) and shear (S-) wave velocities (Vp and Vs ), as well as their ratio (Vp /Vs), has been used for many years at large scales but remains marginal in near-surface applications. For these applications, and are generally retrieved with seismic refraction tomography combining P and SH (shear-horizontal) waves, thus requiring two separate acquisitions. Surface-wave prospecting methods are proposed here as an alternative to SH-wave tomography in order to retrieve pseudo-2D Vs sections from typical P-wave shot gathers and assess the applicability of combined P-wave refraction tomography and surface-wave dispersion analysis to estimate Vp/Vs ratio. We carried out a simultaneous P- and surface-wave survey on a well-characterized granite-micaschists contact at Ploemeur hydrological observatory (France), supplemented with an SH-wave acquisition along the same line in order to compare Vs results obtained from SH-wave refraction tomography and surface-wave profiling. Travel-time tomography was performed with P- and SH- wave first arrivals observed along the line to retrieve Vtomo p and Vtomo s models. Windowing and stacking techniques were then used to extract evenly spaced dispersion data from P-wave shot gathers along the line. Successive 1D Monte Carlo inversions of these dispersion data were performed using fixed Vp values extracted from Vtomo p the model and no lateral constraints between two adjacent 1D inversions. The resulting 1D Vsw s models were then assembled to create a pseudo-2D Vsw s section, which appears to be correctly matching the general features observed on the section. If the pseudo-section is characterized by strong velocity incertainties in the deepest layers, it provides a more detailed description of the lateral variations in the shallow layers. Theoretical dispersion curves were also computed along the line with both and models. While the dispersion curves computed from models provide results consistent with the coherent maxima observed on dispersion images, dispersion curves computed from models are generally not fitting the observed propagation modes at low frequency. Surface-wave analysis could therefore improve models both in terms of reliability and ability to describe lateral variations. Finally, we were able to compute / sections from both and models. The two sections present similar features, but the section obtained from shows a higher lateral resolution and is consistent with the features observed on electrical resistivity tomography, thus validating our approach for retrieving Vp/Vs ratio from combined P-wave tomography and surface-wave profiling

Worldwide trends in diabetes since 1980: a pooled analysis of 751 population-based studies with 4.4 million participants

Background: One of the global targets for non-communicable diseases is to halt, by 2025, the rise in the age-standardised adult prevalence of diabetes at its 2010 levels. We aimed to estimate worldwide trends in diabetes, how likely it is for countries to achieve the global target, and how changes in prevalence, together with population growth and ageing, are affecting the number of adults with diabetes.Methods: We pooled data from population-based studies that had collected data on diabetes through measurement of its biomarkers. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in diabetes prevalence—defined as fasting plasma glucose of 7·0 mmol/L or higher, or history of diagnosis with diabetes, or use of insulin or oral hypoglycaemic drugs—in 200 countries and territories in 21 regions, by sex and from 1980 to 2014. We also calculated the posterior probability of meeting the global diabetes target if post-2000 trends continue.Findings: We used data from 751 studies including 4?372?000 adults from 146 of the 200 countries we make estimates for. Global age-standardised diabetes prevalence increased from 4·3% (95% credible interval 2·4–7·0) in 1980 to 9·0% (7·2–11·1) in 2014 in men, and from 5·0% (2·9–7·9) to 7·9% (6·4–9·7) in women. The number of adults with diabetes in the world increased from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014 (28·5% due to the rise in prevalence, 39·7% due to population growth and ageing, and 31·8% due to interaction of these two factors). Age-standardised adult diabetes prevalence in 2014 was lowest in northwestern Europe, and highest in Polynesia and Micronesia, at nearly 25%, followed by Melanesia and the Middle East and north Africa. Between 1980 and 2014 there was little change in age-standardised diabetes prevalence in adult women in continental western Europe, although crude prevalence rose because of ageing of the population. By contrast, age-standardised adult prevalence rose by 15 percentage points in men and women in Polynesia and Micronesia. In 2014, American Samoa had the highest national prevalence of diabetes (>30% in both sexes), with age-standardised adult prevalence also higher than 25% in some other islands in Polynesia and Micronesia. If post-2000 trends continue, the probability of meeting the global target of halting the rise in the prevalence of diabetes by 2025 at the 2010 level worldwide is lower than 1% for men and is 1% for women. Only nine countries for men and 29 countries for women, mostly in western Europe, have a 50% or higher probability of meeting the global target.Interpretation: Since 1980, age-standardised diabetes prevalence in adults has increased, or at best remained unchanged, in every country. Together with population growth and ageing, this rise has led to a near quadrupling of the number of adults with diabetes worldwide. The burden of diabetes, both in terms of prevalence and number of adults affected, has increased faster in low-income and middle-income countries than in high-income countries

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

An architecture of Multiagent System (MAS) for healthcare Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS)

No AbstractKeywords: Decision Support System (DSS); Healthcare; Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS); Multiagents System (MAS

Adsorption of cadmium ion using a new composite cation-exchanger polyaniline Sn(IV) silicate: kinetics, thermodynamic and isotherm studies

A new organic–inorganic composite cation exchanger polyaniline Sn(IV) silicate has been synthesized. The physicochemical properties of this ion exchanger were determined using different analytical techniques including fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, simultaneous thermogravimetry–differential thermogravimetry analyses, X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and elemental analysis studies. Ion exchange capacity and effect of heating temperature on ion exchange capacity were also carried out on this ion exchange material. Adsorption properties for different metal ions have been investigated and the results revealed that polyaniline Sn(IV) silicate had the highest adsorption capacity for Cd2+ ion. It’s selectivity was tested by achieving some important binary separations. Dependence of adsorption on contact time, temperature, pH of the solution and exchanger dose had been studied to achieve the optimum conditions. Adsorption kinetic study showed that the adsorption process followed the first order kinetics. Adsorption data were fitted to linearly transformed Langmuir isotherm with R2 (correlation coefficient) >0.99. The maximum removal of Cd2+ was found at pH 9. The adsorption was fast and the equilibrium established within 40 min. Thermodynamic parameters viz- entropy change, enthalpy change and Gibb’s free energy change were also calculated