The long-term monitoring of land movements represents the most successful application of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), particularly the Global Positioning System. However, the application of long term monitoring of land movements depends on the availability of homogenous and consistent daily position time series of stations over a period of time. Such time series can be produced very efficiently by using Precise Point Positioning and Double Difference techniques based on particular sophisticated GNSS processing softwares. Nonetheless, these rely on the availability of GNSS products which are precise satellite orbit and clock, and Earth orientation parameters. Unfortunately, several changes and modifications have been mad

Finding communities of connected individuals in complex networks is challenging, yet crucial for understanding different real-world societies and their interactions. Recently attention has turned to discover the dynamics of such communities. However, detecting accurate community structures that evolve over time adds additional challenges. Almost all the state-of-the-art algorithms are designed based on seemingly the same principle while treating the problem as a coupled optimization model to simultaneously identify community structures and their evolution over time. Unlike all these studies, the current work aims to individually consider this three measures, i.e. intra-community score, inter-community score, and evolution of community over

This research is devoted to study the strengthening technique for the existing reinforced concrete beams using external post-tensioning. An analytical methodology is proposed to predict the value of the effective prestress force for the external tendons required to close cracks in existing beams. The external prestressing force required to close cracks in existing members is only a part from the total strengthening force.
A computer program created by Oukaili (1997) and developed by Alhawwassi (2008) to evaluate curvature and deflection for reinforced concrete beams or internally prestressed concrete beams is modified to evaluate the deflection and the stress of the external tendons for the externally strengthened beams using Matlab

Background: Legionella pneumophila (L. pneumophila) is gram-negative bacterium, which causes Legionnaires’ disease as well as Pontiac fever. Objective: To determine the frequency of Legionella pneumophila in pneumonic patients, to determine the clinical utility of diagnosing Legionella pneumonia by urinary antigen testing (LPUAT) in terms of sensitivity and specificity, to compares the results obtained from patients by urinary antigen test with q Real Time PCR (RT PCR) using serum samples and to determine the frequency of serogroup 1 and other serogroups of L. pneumophila. Methods: A total of 100 pneumonic patients (community acquired pneumonia) were enrolled in this study during a period between October 2016 to April 2017; 92 sam

In recent years, the demand for air travel has increased and many people have traveled by plane. Most passengers, however, feel stressed due to the limited cabin space. In order to make these passengers more comfortable, a personal air-conditioning system for the entire chair is needed. This is because the human body experiences discomfort from localized heating or cooling, and thus, it is necessary to provide appropriate airflow to each part of the body. In this paper, a personal air-conditioning system, which consists of six vertically installed air-conditioning vents, will be proposed. To clarify the setting temperature of each vent, the airflow around the passenger and the operative temperature of each part of the body is investigate

Nowadays, the mobile communication networks have become a consistent part of our everyday life by transforming huge amount of data through communicating devices, that leads to new challenges. According to the Cisco Networking Index, more than 29.3 billion networked devices will be connected to the network during the year 2023. It is obvious that the existing infrastructures in current networks will not be able to support all the generated data due to the bandwidth limits, processing and transmission overhead. To cope with these issues, future mobile communication networks must achieve high requirements to reduce the amount of transferred data, decrease latency and computation costs. One of the essential challenging tasks in this subject

This paper discusses using H2 and H∞ robust control approaches for designing control systems. These approaches are applied to elementary control system designs, and their respective implementation and pros and cons are introduced. The H∞ control synthesis mainly enforces closed-loop stability, covering some physical constraints and limitations. While noise rejection and disturbance attenuation are more naturally expressed in performance optimization, which can represent the H₂ control synthesis problem. The paper also applies these two methodologies to multi-plant systems to study the stability and performance of the designed controllers. Simulation results show that the H2 controller tracks a desirable cl

The aerodynamic characteristics of the forward swept wing aircraft have been studied theoretically and experimentally. Low order panel method with the Dirichlet boundary condition have been used to solve the case of the steady, inviscid and compressible flow. Experimentally, a model was manufactured from wood to carry out the tests. The primary objective of the experimental work was the measurements of the wake dimensions and orientation, velocity defect along the wake and the wake thickness. A blower type low speed (open jet) wind tunnel was used in the experimental work. The mean velocity at the test section was (9.3 m/s) and the Reynolds number based on the mean aerodynamic chord and the mean velocity was (0.46x105). The measurements sho