In this paper, we completely characterize the deterministic capacity region of a four-node relay network with no direct links between the nodes, where each node communicates with the three other nodes via a relay. Towards this end, we develop an upper bound on the deterministic capacity region, based on the notion of a one-sided genie. To establish achievability, we use the detour schemes that achieve the upper bound by routing specific bits via indirect paths instead of sending them directly. © 2013 IEEE.

Much research has focused on the development of optimal strategies for rehabilitation and replacement of water and sewer infrastructures. Condition assessment is an integral component in any asset management program for assessing the asset physical condition. Determining the condition of buried infrastructure tends to be cumbersome, costly and error-prone. As such, decision makers must balance the value of obtained information through condition assessments with the cost of obtaining this information. Such decisions must balance between conflicting needs and need to consider the sought level of

Nano particles contribute as a partial substitute in the production of eco-friendly building materials. This research presents a quantitative assessment of the sustainability effect of partially replacing cement in the green concrete mix with two types of nano-waste particles. The assessment is achieved using two weighing criteria developed by a Sustainable Decision Support System (SDSS) model. This assesses the alternatives using scoring systems based on both the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique and Multi-Criteria decision analysis method. Ten sustainable aspects comprising four

Thermal insulators have a crucial role in reducing the operational building energy. They are commonly fabricated from petrochemical materials that mostly cause negative environmental impacts. This study aims to develop banana leaves-polystyrene composites (BL-PS) as a sustainable and low-cost thermal insulator. The BL powder was mixed with PS in different weight ratios (90:10, 80:20, 70:30, and 60:40). Thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, SEM, XRD, FTIR, TGA, and DSC were carried out on BL and BL-PS composites that were prepared with 10 wt.% of PS powder (BL-PS1) and 30 wt.% of PS

Manufacturing systems evolution is afunction in multiple external and internal factors. With today's global awareness of environmental risks as well as the pressing needs to compete through efficiency, manufacturing systems are evolving into a new paradigm. This paper presents a system model for the new green manufacturing paradigm. The model captures various planning activities to migrate from a less green into a greener and more eco-efficient manufacturing. The various planning stages are accompanied by the required control metrics as well as various green tools in an open mixed architecture

This paper reports on the variations in the parameters of the single dispersion Cole bio-impedance model of Daucus Carota Sativus (carrots) under heating and freezing conditions. Experiments are conducted on six samples with recorded live bio-impedance spectra versus temperature. The Cole model parameters are extracted from the measured data using the Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) optimization technique and their variations are correlated with well-known bio-chemical and bio-mechanical variations. This represents a non-invasive method for characterizing and measuring the degree of change

One of the many pleasures of living in Egypt is having the opportunity to visit places like a village called Tunis in El-Fayoum governorate which is a touristic village and export art and handicraft such as Pottery for 3-4 decades. The clay processing in the traditional pottery industry contains several stages. The process and quality of the pottery have to be improved to reduce pollution and the manufacturing round time which could be done through improving the heating process. Towards this goal, turbulent three-dimensional numerical simulations for the in-use air inlet and a modified design

A sensitive and a precise method was developed for the quantification of different Sudan dyes in some Egyptian food samples. They were analyzed utilizing two-fragment ion transition under multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. Separation was carried out on Kinetex 2.6u C18 100 A (75 mm × 4.6 mm) phenomenex using isocratic elution with 10:90% water and acetonitrile containing 2.0 mmol/L ammonium formate and 0.2% formic acid. The validation parameters were obtained and verified. The linearity was 0.2–10.0 ng/mL with r2 > 0.9975. LOD and LOQ were 0.06 and 0.19 ng/mL, respectively, for Sudan (I

Chitosan is one of the most widespread biopolymer materials available in nature which is extracted from chitin. The main source of chitosan is the chitin that is extracted from exoskeletons of crustacean, such as shrimp and crabs, which are found in a huge amount of shells waste that produced from seafood companies around the world. The chitosan has several applications such as pharmaceutical, fertilizer and edible coating in food industries. The quality of the chitosan's depends on its extraction method, so in this research work we have studied the effect of grounding shrimp shell waste

We consider a secondary user with energy harvesting capability. We design access schemes for the secondary user which incorporate random spectrum sensing and random access, and which make use of the primary automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback. The sensing and access probabilities are obtained such that the secondary throughput is maximized under the constraints that both the primary and secondary queues are stable and that the primary queueing delay is kept lower than a specified value needed to guarantee a certain quality of service (QoS) for the primary user. We consider spectrum sensing