Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology

7

Authors: Irum Naz Sodhar; Akhtar Hussain Jalbani; Muhammad Ibrahim Channa; Dil Nawaz Hakro

Sindhi is one of the historical languages which is widely used in all over the world, but especially in the province of Sindh-Pakistan. Sindhi language has its own script and written by the right-handed. Nowadays the use of Sindhi different platforms is increasing, but especially for communication. The majority of the people of Sindh province read, write and speak very well, but they face the problem in text communication while using different communication platforms. However, the users of computer and mobile phone feel trouble/difficulty during the uses of the Sindhi script in typing of text messages, tweets and comments while using different platforms in computer and mobile phone. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is one of the better options for the solution of these problems of text communication on different platforms. For the proper solution of text communication issues, Romanized Sindhi text is used instead of Sindhi text. Romanized text writing is easier than the Sindhi text writing because in Sindhi text writing needs the special type of keyboard while writing of Romanized text no need of special type of keyboard. For the writing of Romanized Sindhi text, rules are defined in this paper which provides easiness during writing and understanding of the text. Romanized Sindhi Rules (RSR) are simple and easy to understand the meaning of the text and provide fast communication (text). This study is also helpful for further research in the Romanized Sindhi text by using different approaches and provides easiness in communication.

7

Authors: Khurram Shaikh; Imtiaz Hussain Kalwer; Khakoo Mal; Bhawani Shanker Chowdhry

Wheel profile is a very important factor that helps the steering performance of the railway vehicle. However, during the operation, the wheel profile tends to vary inconsistently due to frictional contact at wheel-rail interface. This paper focuses on the problem of railway wheelset profile and its alteration that affects the performance of railway vehicle. Signal-based indirect estimation technique using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is proposed to establish a relationship between dynamic response of vehicle and wheel profile. It is observed that changes in wheel profile has direct impact on the frequency of lateral dynamics. The effect of vehicle speed is also analyzed on the yaw and lateral motions of the wheelset. The effectiveness of the proposed technique in determining the relationship between the frequency of the oscillation and conicity level of the solid axle railway wheelset is demonstrated by developing simulation model in MATLAB and Simulink.

9

Authors: Riaz Ahmad Ziar, Syed Irfanullah, Wajid Ullah Khan, Abdus Salam

Blockchain technology provides several suitable characteristics such as immutability, decentralization and verifiable ledger. It records the transactions in a decentralized way and can be integrated into several fields like eHealth, e-Government and smart cities etc. However, blockchain has several privacy and security issues, one of them is the on-chain data privacy. To deal with this issue we provide a privacy-preserving solution for permissionless blockchain to empower the user to take control of transaction data in the open ledger. This work focuses on designing and developing the peer-to-peer system using symmetric cryptography and ethereum smart contract. In this scheme, we create smart contracts for the interaction of the data provider, data consumer, and access control list. Data providers register authorized users in the access control list. Data consumers can check their validity in the access control list. After successful validation, data consumers can request the security key from data providers to access secret information. Based on successful validation, a smart contract that is created between the data provider and data consumer is executed to send a key to the data consumer for accessing the secret information. The smart contracts of this proposed model are modeled in solidity, and the performance of the contracts is assessed in the Ropsten test network.

9

Authors: Ubed Ur Rehman; Jamil Ahmed; Rasool Bux Maher; Aneela Yasmeen

The present study was focused on the available Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities and students’ satisfaction in three public and two private Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of Hyderabad and Jamshoro city. This cross-sectional study recorded WASH facilities in 21 departments of 5-HEIs and satisfaction appraisal of 630 students in total. The survey was also supplemented with quality analysis of Point of Use (PoU) drinking water. The results revealed that the overall 85.7 and 47.6% contamination of the drinking water samples were recorded due to total and thermo-tolerant coliforms, respectively. Further, physiochemical parameters were found in the permissible limits as provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) and arsenic was not detected in any of the water samples. In total 25% of the toilet facilities were found non functional. All monitored HEIs were found having sufficient quantity of water however, 95% hand-washing stations did not supply soap/ detergent for hand-washing. Moreover, this study divulges that there is a significant relationship between WASH facilities like water quality (χ 2= 7.55*; p=0.023), toilets functioning (χ 2= 45.39**; p=0.002), and washing facilities (χ 2= 37.29**; p=0.000) in HEIs and student’s satisfaction in HEIs. Thus, it can be concluded that the poor WASH facilities in HEIs could affect the students’ satisfaction leading to affect their performance in the studies, negatively.

9

Authors: Nazar Gul; Ashifa Soomro; Muhammad Munir Babar; Liaquat Ali Jamali; Bilawal Abbasi

An experiment was conducted to assess the yield potential and Water Use Efficiency (WUE) of Canola crop grown under sprinkler and basin irrigation techniques on a clay loam soil. The experiment was designed by the Principles of Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with two treatments, viz. T1 (sprinkler irrigation method) and T2 (basin irrigation method), replicated four times. Marginal quality water with Electrical Conductivity (ECw) of 1.83 dS/m and pH of 8.2 was used for irrigation. The crop yield obtained under T1 and T2 treatments were 1,407.9 and 1,123.8 kg ha-1, respectively; 20% more yield was observed under T1 treatment. In the given order of treatments (T1 and T2), the Canola crop used 3,605 and 4,453 m3 ha-1 of irrigation water, hence, 19% water saving was achieved by T1 treatment. The WUE attained under T1 and T2 treatments were 0.39 and 0.25 kg m-3 respectively; therefore, 35.8% WUE was enhanced under T1 treatment. While comparing the agronomic parameters of the crop under the two procedures, all the observed parameters (plant height, number of branches plant-1, number of pods plant-1, pod length, number of seeds pod-1 and biomass plant-1) were superior in case of T1 treatment than T2 treatment. The soil Electrical Conductivity (ECse), Sodium Absorption Ratio (SAR), and Exchangeable Sodium Percentage (ESP) increased, and pH decreased under both the treatments, however, the maximum increase in ECse, SAR and ESP, and maximum decrease in pH occurred under T2 treatment. Statistical analysis showed that the crop yield, irrigation water use, WUE, ECse, pH, SAR, ESP, and all the agronomic parameters differed significantly (p < 0.05) under the two treatments.

11

Authors: Syed Hassan Raza; Rameez Khalid; Muhammad Wasif

In this research, generic and specific risks related to the critical activities of the engineering projects are identified. The surveys and interviews from various project managers and engineers of the leading consultant firms conducting engineering projects in Pakistan are the core identifiers. Specific risks associated with the common engineering projects are qualitatively analyzed to prioritize the risks according to their impact on the schedule and cost of the project. Critical activities related to the specific risks are identified. Estimated man hours without and with quantitative risk assessment have been determined to study the impact of including risk analysis on the schedule and cost of the engineering projects. The relationship between the critical activities and the total man-hours have also been developed to identify the most critical activity or activities influencing the man-hours and ultimately the cost of the project. The likelihood of occurrence of risks are also related to the man-hour completion, to analyze the effect of certainty of the man-hour’s determination, which is an important aspect of estimating schedule, EMV and finally cost. Using the analysis, it has been inferred that the 95% confidence level is not suitable all the time for the estimation of risk impact on the schedule and cost. It increases the man-hour estimation resulting in less competitive proposal to win the project.

12

Authors: Lubna Gul; Salma Imtiaz; Salman Munir; Majid Munir; Muhammad Ajmal Khan

Change is inevitable, software undergoes continuous change during its life cycle. A small change can trigger high evolution because of the ripple effect identified during the activity of impact analysis. However, it depends on the traceability information, which is the connection between software development artifacts. The current traceability techniques lack the breadth and depth to carryout informative impact analysis. We have performed a detailed literature survey of traceability techniques from the year 2008-2018. These techniques are evaluated on the criteria for effective impact analysis present in the literature. The results highlight that no single technique fulfills the criteria for effective impact analysis alone, they can be combined together to achieve promising results. We have presented a hybrid approach that combines four traceability techniques to achieve the entire criteria for an effective impact analysis after careful evaluation. The techniques combined are: Information Retrieval, Pre-Requirement Specification Traceability, Value based Requirements Traceability Technique and Goal Centric Traceability Technique. Our proposed hybrid approach is empirically validated via a field experiment. Results are analyzed for time and effort utilized in maintaining and retrieving the traceability information. The results are promising as the hybrid approach achieves effective impact analysis within minimal time and effort. We plan to extend the validation to real world impact analysis situation via case study.

13

Authors: Muhammad Raees; Sehat Ullah; Inam Ur Rehman; Muhammad Azhar

In the context of Virtual Reality (VR), interactions refer to the plausible actions in a Virtual Environment (VE). To have an engrossing interface, interactions by the gestures of hand are becoming prominent. With this research work, a novel interaction technique is proposed where interactions are performed on the basis of the position of thumb in dynamic image stream. The technique needs no expensive tracker but an ordinary camera to trace hand movements and position of thumb. The interaction tasks are enacted in distinct interaction states, where the Angle of Inclination (AOI) of thumb is used for state-to-state transition. The angle is computed dynamically between the tip-of-thumb and the base of the Region of Interest (ROI) of an input image. The technique works in two phases: learning phase and application phase. In the learning phase, user-defined fistpostures with distinct AOI are learnt. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is trained by the AOI of the postures. In the application phase, interactions are performed in distinct interaction states whereas a particular state is activated by posing the known posture. To follow the trajectory of thumb, dynamic mapping is performed to control a virtual hand by the position of thumb in the input image. The technique is implemented in a Visual Studio project called Thumb-Based Interaction for Virtual Environments (TIVE). The project was evaluated by a group of 15 users in a moderate lighting condition. The 89.7% average accuracy rate of the evaluation proves suitability of the technique in the wide range VR applications.

14

Authors: Ayesha Maroof; Adnan Tariq; Sahar Noor

Shorter product life cycles, unpredictable demand patterns and the ever-shrinking time to market, have been constantly keeping the manufacturing firms under a lot of pressure. To face these challenges the manufacturing organizations have been shifting to Cellular Manufacturing (CM) due to its benefits of reducing manufacturing costs, increasing flexibility and delivering orders on time. Despite having several benefits, designing a Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS) for a real-life application is a tough ask. The main challenge is the part-machine grouping in cells. It becomes even more challenging when the group scheduling (GS) problem is handled alongside the part-machine clustering. To take up this challenge, an integrated model is developed during this research which handles the machine-part grouping and the GS problems, simultaneously. To optimize the multiple objectives of maximizing Grouping Efficacy (GE) and minimizing Makespan (Cmax), concurrently, a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) based approach is developed. The proposed technique is validated through the famous benchmark problems, unlike the several approaches already available in literature. The computational results have shown that the integrated approach, presented in this paper, is more effective as compared to a sequential technique. Also, its accuracy remains intact even if it is applied to large sized problems.

19

Authors: Faria Nazir; Muhammad Nadeem Majeed; Mustansar Ali Ghazanfar; Muazzam Maqsood

Over the last few decades, the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning has evolved. Due to the advancement in these fields, much work has been done to assist language learning with the help of computers called Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). Mispronunciation detection is one of the significant tasks of the CALL system. An efficient mispronunciation detection model has a positive impact on the life of second language learners by providing phoneme level feedback. In this paper, we introduce the phone grouping technique for mispronunciation detection that is based on mistakes probability. We consider mispronunciation detection as a classification problem, traditionally for this purpose, a separate classifier is trained for each phoneme mistake that requires a lot of memory and time. Instead of training a separate classifier, we group the phoneme based on their mistakes probability that helps in reducing the number of the classifiers to be trained and also saves memory and time. We use the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier and test the results on the Arabic dataset (28 Phonemes). The performance of our proposed method is evaluated by using accuracy. The results of the model are evaluated using the confusion matrix and gives an accuracy of 88%. Our approach outperforms the existing systems developed for Arabic phonemes in terms of accuracy and is also time/memory efficient.

7

Authors: Hafiz Qasim Ali; Amir Farooq; Muzaffar Ahmad; Mohammad Laeeque Ahmed; Muhammad Akhtar

Wastewater management is one of the biggest challenges in the world due to increase in population and industrialization. In Faisalabad (FSD), wastewater treatment is being done through Wastewater Stabilization Ponds (WSPs) at Chokera, which is one of the most economical methods of Wastewater Treatment (WWT). Various parameters were examined to check wastewater treatment efficiency of the ponds under diverse climatic conditions. These included Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD), pH, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Turbidity, Copper, Total Solids (TS), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) and Lead. Six locations which were selected for monitoring treatment efficiency, included inlet and outlet of treatment plant, influent of anaerobic ponds, effluent of anaerobic ponds, effluent of facultative ponds, and Pharang drain before and after blending with treated sewage. The testing was performed in two seasons (i.e. Winter 2015 and Summer 2016) in Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Lahore, Pakistan. BOD5 removal efficiency of the treatment plant was found 30.08% in winter and 51.74% in summer against designed value of 90% removal. Most of the parameters of the effluent were not meeting the Punjab Environmental Quality Standards (PEQS). The reasons of low efficiency are; variation in climatic conditions (i.e. less solar heat intensity, wind speed and ceased microbial activity in winter), lack of funds by government, increased population, mixing of industrial sewage with domestic sewage and less attention being paid to maintain the performance of Ponds. The study was carried out to assess and compare the efficiency of treatment plant with PEQS in two climatic conditions.

9

Authors: Luqman Ahmed Pirzada; Xiaoli Wu; Qaiser Ali; Asif Khateeb

Solar energy is radiant light as a form of thermal heat energy which can be obtained and used by means of a variety of solar apparatus. As apparatus the flat and curved plate solar collector is specifically designed for assembling solar energy as a solar water heater system. The designing potency of this collector lone can generate medium level hot water from radiant sunlight source via absorbed plates. Standard type flat and curved plates solar collector plates are mostly used in remote coldest regions of the world where hot water is consumed for commercial and domestic purposes. These types of solar collector Plates can cheaply be manufactured compared to other solar panels like solar Shingles, Polycrystalline Solar Panels, Monocrystalline Solar Panels, and Thin Film Solar Panels. For future work, this proposed pre-design is recommended for fabrication. A numerical study was carried-out on eight city locations in China by tracing their horizontal and vertical longitudinal, latitudinal lines noting the date, time and sunlight feeding of temperatures in the Celsius scale with the help of simulation and modeling tools like CFD, ANSYS FLUENT software, mesh geometry tools, and by using the Navier-Stokes and Continuity equations by fluid flow discharge rate, mass flow, water temperature and dropping of temperature, radiation working mechanisms, dimensions of water flowing tubes and absorber plates, density, the velocity of water as the working fluid, the viscosity of water in a cold and hot state as a process of Pre-design. Work also focuses on the comparison between flat plate collector and curved plate collector radiant sunlight absorption, As end result it is found the Curved plate collector produces 22% more elevated heat of outgoing water than flat plate collector.

10

Authors: Abdul Salam Khan; Khawer Naeem; Raza Ullah Khan

An abrupt change requires a robust and flexible response from a manufacturing system. Dedicated Manufacturing System (DMS) has been a long practiced taxonomy for mass production and minimum varieties. In contrast, Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) has been introduced for responding to quantity as well as variety issues. This study considers both production taxonomics by using a multi objective model of cost and time. An Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation is presented and subsequently validated. The analysis procedure is administered in two phases. In the first phase, comparison of production cost and process time in DMS and FMS is presented. The model is implemented by using an exact solution approach and results show that FMS is a viable option, compared to DMS, according to the criteria of cost, time, and productivity. In the second phase, sensitivity analysis is performed by using several FMS (n) and the impact of cells selection on the performance of system is studied. It is concluded that n=1 (single cell-based FMS) is more relevant for cost minimization; however, n = 6 is a suitable candidate for producing more quantity in given time horizon (process time minimization). Lastly, key findings are reported, and future research avenues are provided.

10

Authors: Muhammad Shahid Nazir, Haroon-Ur-Rasheed Khan; Abubaker Akram; Bhagesh Maheshwari; Muhammad Aqil

This paper describes the implementation of a computationally efficient embedded system on an Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) platform for real-time brain activity estimation with multiple channels. The brain signals from multiple channels are considered as output of independent linear systems with unknown parameters representing the brain activity in corresponding channels. Multiple adaptive Recursive LeastSquares Estimation (RLSE) cores are implemented in FPGA to independently estimate the brain activity in each channel concurrently. The proposed RLSE-FPGA system provides dedicated (no time or resource sharing) and parallel processing environment. The universal asynchronous receiver transmitter core is also developed to communicate the measured and estimated parameters supported by storage facility programmed as shared memory. The computational precision is guaranteed by deploying a 32-bit floating point core for all the variables. The validation carried out by real Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy dataset and comparative analysis with the previously reported result, demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed system. The computational cost endorses the effectiveness of concurrent processing of multiple channelsꞌ data in a sample before the arrival of the next sample. The proposed methodology has potential in real-time medical, military and industrial applications.

11

Authors: Zia ur Rehman; Khalid Farooq; Hassan Mujtaba; Usama Khalid

Knowing the engineering properties of geomaterials is imperative to make the right decision while designing and executing any geotechnical project. For the economical and safe geotechnical design, quick characterization of the compressibility properties of the cohesive soil is often desirable; these properties are indeed tedious to determine through actual tests. Therefore, correlating the consolidation parameters of the soils with its index properties has a great significance in the geotechnical engineering field. Several attempts have been made in the past to develop correlations between the consolidation parameters and index properties of the cohesive soils, within certain limitations. However, there is still a need to develop such correlations based on the extensive database, composing of unified plasticity range of soils, i.e., low to high plasticity. In the current study, 148 undisturbed soil specimens were obtained from different areas of Pakistan. Out of which 120 samples were utilized to develop correlations, and 28 samples were used to check the validity of the developed correlations. In order to enhance the index properties database, 30 more bentonite mixed soil samples were prepared and tested accordingly. Correlations to envisage different consolidation parameters such as compression index, compression ratio and coefficient of volume compressibility were developed using 150 cohesive soil samples of low to high plasticity. In addition, the performance of these developed correlations was verified on a set of 40 soil samples and compared with the performance of different correlations available in the literature. The percentage deviation in the prediction of compressibility characteristics through developed correlations in the present study was found to be very less, which endorsed the excellent reliability of the developed correlations.

11

Authors: Khuda Bux; Muhammad Yousaf; Akhtar Hussain Jalbani; Komal Batool

The number of client-side attacks is increasing day-by-day. These attacks are launched by using various methods like phishing, drive-by downloads, click-frauds, social engineering, scareware, and ransomware. To get more advantage with less exertion and time, the attackers are focus on the clients, rather than servers which are more secured as compared to the clients. This makes clients as an easy target for the attackers on the Internet. A number of systems/tools have been created by the security community with various functions for detection of client-side attacks. The discovery of malicious servers that launch the client side attacks can be characterized in two types. First to detect malicious servers with passive detection which is often signature based. Second to detect the malicious servers with active detection often with dynamic malware analysis. Current systems or tools have more focus on identifying malicious servers rather than preventing the clients from those malicious servers. In this paper, we have proposed a solution for the detection and prevention of malicious servers that use the Bro Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and VirusTotal API 2.0. The detected malicious link is then blocked at the gateway.

12

Authors: Muhammad Rizwan Riaz; Rashid Hameed; Usman Akmal; Asad Ali Gillani; Muhammad Ilyas

The energy dissipation capacity of concrete is an important aspect for a Reinforced Concrete (RC) structure to be seismically resistant. Various types of concrete incorporating sustainable materials are being developed these days such as recycled aggregate concrete. Determination of energy dissipation capacity of such new types of concrete is of great importance for their application in RC structures which are to be constructed in seismically active areas. In this regard, the experimental study presented in this contribution investigated the energy dissipation capacity of RC beams constructed using recycled aggregate concrete and subjected to three different deflection amplitude levels of reverse cyclic flexural loading. For this purpose, a total of 20 RC beams of cross section 75 x 150 mm and length of 1350 mm were cast using five different concrete compositions and tested. Among five different concrete compositions, one was control concrete containing 100% natural aggregates while the remaining four compositions were of recycled aggregate concrete containing natural and recycled aggregates. Four replacement levels (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%) of natural aggregates with recycled aggregates were examined. Results indicated that the amplitude level of imposed deflection is an important factor which influenced the value of energy dissipated by RC beams. Further, results showed that RC beam constructed using recycled aggregate concrete containing 25% recycled aggregates exhibited energy dissipation capacity similar to or even better than that of control RC beam containing 100% natural aggregates.

14

Authors: Amar ul Hassan Khawaja; Mirza Jahanzaib; Shahzad Zaka

The aim of this research is to study the machinability aspects of hardened AISI 4340 High Strength Low Alloy (HSLA) steel (50 ± 2 HRC (Hardness Rockwell C)). The experimental investigation using coated carbide inserts is carried out during the dry hard milling process in a sustainable environment. The input parameters in the study are speed, feed rate and depth of cut and the responses are Average surface Roughness (Ra) and Material Removal Rate (MRR) that are selected through screening. Central Composite Design (CCD) in response surface methodology has been utilized as the experimental design technique with twenty experiments. Analysis of variance has been employed to examine the momentous machining parameters and responses. A mathematical model has been developed to optimize the surface roughness and material removal rate. It has been observed that the most significant factor for Ra is feed rate while for MRR depth of cut is the most significant factor. The results show that the minimum value of Ra ~ 0.098 µm is achieved at speed ~ 1000 RPM, feed rate ~ 300 mm/min and depth of cut ~ 0.2 mm while the maximum value of MRR ~ 6.35 cm3 /min is attained at feed rate ~ 500mm/min and depth of cut ~ 0.4 mm regarding less or no effect of speed ~ 500-1000 RPM. The average forecast error for the validation information has been observed to be 3.35%. for Ra and 3.2% for MRR. Further, it is investigated that good surface finish like grinding and dimensional accuracy can be achieved with coated carbide tools.

15

Authors: Zulfiqar Ali Bhatti; Khadija Qureshi; Inamullah Bhatti; Raja Fahad Ashraf; Ghulamullah Maitlo

The work focuses on the removal of Arsenic-III (As(III)) from water sample by an indigenous iron ore from Balochistan by adsorption method. Three iron ore samples were analyzed by X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD) and a sample from Shikarap containing iron 36.2% was selected because it contained the highest amount of hematite. The batch study was conducted to examine the adsorption by iron ore and maximum adsorption was observed at pH 6, 1/2 g dose per 50 mL solution, contact time 2 hr and shaking speed 150 rpm. At the optimized conditions, the removal was 89% when monitored at 50 μg L-1 initial concentration of arsenic. The arsenic removal was monitored by Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS) using hydride generation. Dubinin - Radushkevich (D-R), Freundlich and Langmuir's isotherms were examined. The highest adsorption capacity of iron ore for As(III) removal was observed 13.67 μg g-1 by Langmuir model and Freundlich isotherm indicated good adsorption intensity with value n = 1.512. Thermodynamic parameters revealed that adsorption was exothermic and physisorption. The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-Ray (EDX) techniques were applied to scan the surface morphology and the percentage elemental composition of samples respectively. SEM results demonstrated that Shikarap mineral grains are an oval shape and these were changed after the uptake of As(III). The EDX spectra of Shikarap mineral confirm the As(III) adsorption on particles as As 4.19%.

15

Authors: Muhammad Aamir, Syed Sajjad Hussain Rizvi; Manzoor Ahmed Hashmani; Muhammad Zubair; Jawwad Ahmed

Cyber security is one of the major concerns of today’s connected world. For all the platforms of today’s communication technology such as wired, wireless, local and remote access, the hackers are present to corrupt the system functionalities, circumvent the security measures and steal sensitive information. Amongst many techniques of hackers, port scanning and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are very common. In this paper, the benefits of machine learning are taken into consideration for classification of port scanning and DDoS attacks in a mix of normal and attack traffic. Different machine learning algorithms are trained and tested on a recently published benchmark dataset (CICIDS2017) to identify the best performing algorithms on the data which contains more recent vectors of port scanning and DDoS attacks. The classification results show that all the variants of discriminant analysis and Support Vector Machine (SVM) provide good testing accuracy i.e. more than 90%. According to a subjective rating criterion mentioned in this paper, 9 algorithms from a set of machine learning experiments receive the highest rating (good) as they provide more than 85% classification (testing) accuracy out of 22 total algorithms. This comparative analysis is further extended to observe training performance of machine learning models through k-fold cross validation, Area Under Curve (AUC) analysis of the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves, and dimensionality reduction using the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). To the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive comparison of various machine learning algorithms on CICIDS2017 dataset is found to be deficient for port scanning and DDoS attacks while considering such recent features of attack.

6

Authors: Sadaf Noshin; Humaira Kanwal; Abrar Ahmad

Energy consumption of lighting can be reduced by using different daylight control strategies. The rise in environmental distresses requires the necessity of natural light control systems. Light shelf is considered as excellent lighting control scheme that provides great lighting production and inexpensive prospect via entering the daylight inside the space. The aims of this study shows that the daylight efficiency and visual productivity are affected by the design parameters of light shelf such as its angle, location and height. In this research, Autodesk Ecotect 2011 is used for the daylight simulation of summer solstice and winter solstice days under overcast sky conditions on a nominated theoretical study space of an institutional building. Daylight simulation is carried out to evaluate the illuminance requirement within the selected space and analysis is also executed on the model with selected categories of light shelves including different positions, heights and angles. The acquired data is then exported on Radiance software intended for complete day-light investigation. The results of this research shows that external light shelf at a height of 7' and an angle of 20˚ is the most appropriate choice in prevailing the glare and it also enhanced the illuminance level to11.5% in 21st June and 10.6% in 21st December as compared to without light shelves. Furthermore, the shaded range is decreased by the rise in the angle of Light shelf which has a tendency to increase the inside average lighting. Hence, significant consideration should be given to the height and position of light shelves, since it has a superior effect on light shelf performance.

7

Authors: Maryam Zaffar, Manzoor Ahmad Hashmani, K.S. Savita, Syed Sajjad Hussain Rizvi, Mubashar Rehman

The Educational Data Mining (EDM) is a very vigorous area of Data Mining (DM), and it is helpful in predicting the performance of students. Student performance prediction is not only important for the student but also helpful for academic organization to detect the causes of success and failures of students. Furthermore, the features selected through the students’ performance prediction models helps in developing action plans for academic welfare. Feature selection can increase the prediction accuracy of the prediction model. In student performance prediction model, where every feature is very important, as a neglection of any important feature can cause the wrong development of academic action plans. Moreover, the feature selection is a very important step in the development of student performance prediction models. There are different types of feature selection algorithms. In this paper, Fast Correlation-Based Filter (FCBF) is selected as a feature selection algorithm. This paper is a step on the way to identifying the factors affecting the academic performance of the students. In this paper performance of FCBF is being evaluated on three different student’s datasets. The performance of FCBF is detected well on a student dataset with greater no of features.

8

Authors: Ayesha Amir Siddiqi, Attaullah Khawaja, Adnan Hashmi

Computed Tomographic (CT) imaging is extensively implemented for liver tumor visualization and detection. Computer aided image processing algorithms can provide aid to the physicians and radiologists in detecting deadly diseases of liver specifically cancerous liver tumors. This paper presents a novel image processing technique to automatically classify liver for its abnormality without going through the liver segmentation stage. The study is conducted on a dataset of 39 samples of abdominal CT images. The CT dataset comprises of images bearing unhealthy liver. The unhealthy liver is further divided into livers bearing malignant tumors namely hepatoma and benign tumors namely hemangiomas. The methodology adopted for the study comprises of feature extraction from original CT images of all types of liver with special focus on textural information. The extracted features undergo the process of classification for malignancy and benignancy of the liver tumor. The classifiers used for textural feature analysis include Support Vector Machines (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and ensemble classifier. Amongst these classifiers SVM yields a classification accuracy of 100% as compare to KNN and ensemble classifier which give the classification accuracy of 94.7% and 52.6% respectively. The proposed method of classification applied on entire abdominal CT scans without segmentation is performed by using the feature extraction matrix of structural similarity index (SSIM), which gives an improved classification accuracy of 100% as compared to the traditional GLCM matrix. The methodology can be tested to classify the liver for malignancy using other non-invasive techniques of ultrasounds and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as well.

8

Authors: Muhammad Mithal Lund; Muhammad Ibrahim Keerio; Shamsuddin Tunio; Allah Wadhayo Gandahi; Inayatullah Rajpar

An experiment was executed at experimental farm of Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam to quantify the losses in grain yield and quality of wheat in relation to time and method of harvesting. The experiment involved three bread wheat varieties (Kiran-95, Mehran-89 and TD-1) and two harvesting methods; conventional method using Sickle and mechanized method using Reaper. The harvesting times considered were: 5-days-before-maturity (DBM), 5-Days-after-maturity (DAM), 10 DAM, and 15 DAM. The data were recorded for grain yield, yield components (harvest index, seed index, etc.) and some grain quality traits (shriveled & broken grain losses). The results highlighted that, harvesting with reaper was most effective and economical in terms of losses to grain yield and quality over sickle (manual) method of harvesting. Compared to the other harvesting times tested in this study, the wheat crop harvested at proper physiological maturity (5 DAM) was found to be most effective and beneficial to maintain quality and obtain maximum grain yield. Generally, wheat crop harvested through conventional method using sickle showed more harvesting losses at different harvesting intervals. Among three wheat cultivars, the cultivar TD-1 harvested with sickle (manual method) at proper maturity, 5 DBM and 5, 10 and 15 DAM showed 5.55%, 6.54%, 7.09%, 8.06% and 9.45% harvesting losses; and 8.79%, 10.46%, 10.67%, 11.76% and 13.25% hauling losses, respectively. Contrarily, when same cultivar TD-1 was harvested through mechanized method using reaper, the respective treatment plots showed 5.35%, 6.09%, 6.21%, 7.07% and 8.49% harvesting losses, and 8.57%, 9.89%, 9.54%, 10.45% and 11.99% hauling losses to grain yield, respectively. This study suggests that wheat crop should be harvested with reaper at proper physiological maturity. Among the three bread wheat varieties included in the study, the variety Kiran-95 proved to be the most resistant to grain yield and quality losses.

10

Authors: Mushtaq Ahmad Khan; Zawar Hussain Khan; Haseeb Khan; Sheraz Khan; Suhail Khan

Image denoising is a fundamental problem in both image processing and computer vision with numerous applications. It can be formulated as an inverse problem. Variational methods are commonly used to solve noise removal problems. The Total Variation (TV) regularization has evolved from an image denoising method for images corrupted with multiplicative noise into a more general technique for inverse problems such as denoising, deblurring, blind deconvolution, and inpainting, which also encompasses the Impulse, Poisson, Speckle, and mixed noise models. Multiplicative noise removal based on TV regularization has been widely researched in image science. In multiplicative noise problems, original image is multiplied by a noise rather than added to the original image. This article proposes a novel meshless collocation technique for the solution of a model having multiplicative noise. This technique includes TV and local collocation along with Multiquadric Radial Basis Function (MQ-RBF) for the solution of associated Euler-Lagrange equation for restoring multiplicative noise from digital images. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is able to preserve small image details while the noise in the homogeneous regions is removed sufficiently. As a consequence, our method yields better denoised results than those of the current state of the art methods with respect to the Peak-Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) values.

11

Authors: Muhammad Awais Shafique; Eiji Hato

Household trip data is of crucial importance for managing present transportation infrastructure as well as to plan and design future facilities. It also provides basis for designing new policies, implemented under Transportation Demand Management, and assessing their effectiveness. With passage of time, methods used for household trip data collection have evolved, starting from the conventional face-to-face interviews or paperand-pencil interviews, moving on to mail-back surveys and internet-based surveys, before finally reaching to the recent approach of passive data gathering. Recording travel data automatically will require the use of modern technology present in the form of various sensors, and employing intelligent algorithms to infer the required information from these sensors’ data. These sensors can be integrated into a purpose-built device or more recently can be present in smartphones. The current study provides a comprehensive review of the research done in the field of travel mode detection from data passively collected with the help of various devices. The review starts from Global Positioning System (GPS) loggers and moves to cover purpose-built wearable devices containing additional sensors and finally ending with the most modern approach of incorporating smartphones. The summary tables presented in this study are of great value to the researchers trying to get insight of this research field.

13

Authors: Neelam Mukhtar; Mohammad Abid Khan; Nadia Chiragh; Asim Ullah Jan; Shah Nazir

Although work has been done in Urdu Sentiment Analysis by researchers but still there is a lot of room for improvement in the form of achieving higher accuracy. Therefore, in this research, the accuracy of Urdu Sentiment Analysis in multiple domains is enhanced by dealing negations using Lexicon-based approach, one of the broadly used approaches for performing Sentiment Analysis. Negations in Urdu Sentiment Analysis are particularly focused in this research because of their effective role in Sentiment Analysis. Both local and long distance negations are considered. For achieving this goal, a corpus with 6025 Urdu sentences, from 151 blogs that belong to 14 different genres is taken in which use of negations is carefully observed. Two major steps are taken in this regard. First, to deal with the morphological negations, this type of negations is included in the negative word file of the Urdu Sentiment Lexicon developed for performing Sentiment Analysis of Urdu blogs. Secondly, rule-based approach is used for handling the implicit and explicit negations. Rules are designed that can deal with both implicit and explicit negations effectively. Implementation of these rules increased the accuracy of Sentiment Analyzer from 73.88% to 78.32% with 0.745, 0.788 and 0.745 Precision, Recall and Fmeasure respectively, which is statistically significant improvement.

13

Authors: Rashid Hameed, Usman Akmal; Qasim S. Khan; Muhammad Ahsan Cheema; Muhammad Rizwan Riaz

A large volume of concrete debris is being produced in many countries on the globe due to the demolition of old concrete structures and testing of concrete specimens in laboratories. One of the ways to reuse concrete debris is to produce Recycled Aggregates (RA) and use them in new concrete. In recent years, Recycled Aggregates Concrete (RAC) has experienced increasing demand in various non-structural and structural applications. In reinforced concrete structures, one of the sources of brittle failure is sudden loss of bond between reinforcing bars and concrete in anchorage zones. Therefore, for the structural application of any new kind of concrete such as fiber reinforced RAC, knowledge of bond characteristics of reinforcing bars embedded in concrete becomes essential for determining the overall structural response under different modes of loading. In this regard, this study experimentally investigated the effect of fibers on the bond stress-slip behavior of deformed steel re-bar embedded in RAC. Concrete mixes having 0, 50 and 100% RAs were prepared with and without the addition of fibers. Two types of fibers were investigated in mono form: hooked-ends steel and polypropylene fibers. The dosage of steel and polypropylene fibers was kept 40 and 4.4 kg/m3, respectively. Axial compression and standard pull-out tests were performed. Test specimens for pull-out test were prepared using deformed steel re-bars of 19mm (#6) diameter. The results of strength tests confirmed that the compressive strength of concrete is decreased by replacing Natural Aggregates (NA) with RAs. For bond behavior of steel re-bar, the results of this study showed that replacement of 50% NA with RAs did not affect the bond response of steel bar, however, 100% replacement of NA with RAs showed detrimental effect on bond stress slip behavior. The results further showed that the addition of both types of fibers made it possible to recover the loss in compressive strength, bond strengths and bond toughness occurred because of replacing NA with RAs. In case of RA concrete mixes containing hooked-ends steel fibers, strength values were found even greater than the strength values of Natural Aggregates Concrete (NAC). From the results of this study, it was found that it is possible to design a structural concrete mix using 100% RAs and steel fibers at relatively low dosage of 40kg/m3.

15

Authors: Ayesha Haroon; Irfan Shafqat Javed; Huma Rehmat Baig; Ali Nasir, Arslan Ashraf

Over the past two decades, developing distributed energy sources in electric power grid have created new challenges related to the power quality, voltage adjustment and proficient energy utilization. Power electronic converters are widely used to interface the emerging energy systems (without and with energy storage) and smart buildings with the transmission and distribution systems. Flexible Ac Transmission Systems (FACTS) and Voltage-Source Converters (VSC), with smart dynamic controllers, are emerging as stabilization and power filtering equipment to improve the power quality. FACTS devices are of vital significance for tackling the problem of voltage instability which is inevitable and leads to losses in transmission system networks. These devices provide fast voltage regulation, ensure system stability and reactive power compensation. In this regard, modeling, control and appropriate placement of these devices in the transmission lines have been of great importance for researchers of power transmission systems. By using high speed power electronic converters, FACTS perform many times faster than the conventional compensation techniques. FACTS not only provide fast voltage regulation but also damping of active power oscillations and reactive power compensation. Hence, they increase the availability and reliability of the power systems. But, the functioning of a FACTS device extremely reckons upon its parametric quantity, appropriate placement, and sizing in the power network. In this paper, an extensive literature survey is presented to discuss and investigate these parameters of FACTS devices.

19

Authors: Naveed Khan Baloch; Ayaz Hussain; Muhammad Iram Baig

The decreasing size of the transistor has increased the vulnerability towards faults. Increasing number of cores on a single chip has made the concept of Network on Chip (NoC) a standard communication backbone among cores. This facility comes with vulnerability of faults in the system due to decreasing size of transistors. A permanent fault in the network leads to undesirable consequence such as permanent blocking of flits or failure of the whole router. Preserving the router in the operational state has a significant impact on the reliability of the system. Permanent fault in buffers and pipeline stages of the router has a high impact on performance. The proposed router architecture Protector provides faults protection to both buffers and pipelines stages by exploiting the concepts of borrowing from other resources, using bypass paths and by creating multiple paths to reach output. The proposed router incurred an area overhead of 30% as compared to the baseline design. Reliability analysis using Silicon Protection Factor indicates that the proposed router has better fault tolerance efficiency as compared to state of the art. Latency analysis using PARSEC and SPLASH-2 benchmarks indicates proposed router incurs 13% and 16% latency overhead in the presence of faults.

7

Authors: Bilal Rasul, Hira Naz

We have performed surface-induced dissociation studies of small deuterated hydrocarbon cations i.e. CDx+ with x=2-4, colliding with two types of tungsten-coated surfaces, in the incident energy range between Ein = 0 eV approximately, up to Ein = 100 eV. A 34 nm thick W layer deposited on stainless steel using the Thermionic Vacuum Arc (TVA) method and a small sample of a tile cut from ASDEX-Upgrade tiles, consisting of Plasma Sprayed (PS) tungsten on carbon, are exposed to ion flux in these experiments. A double-focussing reverse geometry BE mass spectrometer, is used under ultra high vacuum conditions. Mass spectra of secondary charged particles are recorded via time-of-flight mass analyser. For comparison, we have performed equivalent study on polished stainless steel under experimental status explained in Section 2 below. At very low energies i.e. below 10 eV, only surface reflected projectiles are seen, whereas most of them are neutralized by surface micro charges. We observed that the fragmentation pattern of the small molecular ions at a given energy is strongly dependent on the surface. The roughness of both of the said thin films and their reflectivity for the projectile ion beam is studied by analysis of the ion yields of the reaction products

8

Authors: Raja Fahad Qureshi, Inamullah Bhatti, Khadija Qureshi, Sanam Irum Memon

Rupture of the membrane is considered as one of the most critical characteristics while working on wastewater treatment via emulsion liquid membrane. This paper presents a decisive study of different parameters affecting the rupture of membrane. The potential parameters which are investigated in this study include, surfactant dosage, surfactant concentration, concentration of aqueous phase, emulsification velocity, ratio of organic to aqueous phases and ratio of membrane to feed phases. The Design of Experiment (DOE) approach was used to design the experiments and the results were analyzed statistically through a software Minitab-18. The study revealed that amongst all these parameters, two are the highly significant playing a crucial role in rupture of the membrane. These significant parameters are emulsification velocity and ratio of the organic to aqueous phase. Pareto chart being used as an effective statistical tool implied that the emulsification velocity and ratio of the organic to aqueous phase have negative and positive effects on the response respectively. Using the Response Optimizer tool, the optimum levels of all the potential parameters were statistically calculated followed by an experimental verification resulting a least minimum rupture of 36%. A statistical model was developed in this study and the values of predicted rupture were compared with the experimental results. The calculated correlation coefficient R2 of the developed model was 0.998 and the accuracy of correlation coefficient deduced that the developed model of rupture will precisely calculate the rupture over the range of values.

9

Authors: Khalil Rehman Memon, Aftab Ahmed Mahesar, Shahzad Ali Baladi, Muhannad Talib Sukar

The experimental study was conducted on rheological properties in laboratory to measure the integrity of cement slurry. Three samples were used and analyzed at different parameters to check the elasticity of cement slurry. Additives with various concentrations, i.e. silica fume % BWOC (Present by Weight on Cement) (15, 17, 19 and 21), dispersant % Wt (Percent Weight) (0.21, 0.26 and 0.31) and additional 1; % Wt of fluid losscontrol were used to improve the performance of the cement slurry at the temperature of 123oC. The results have shown that increase in the concentration of dispersants that have caused to decrease in the Plastic Viscosity (PV), Yield Point (YP) and GS (Gel Strength). The rheological properties of cement were improved with the addition of fluid loss control additive in 21 % BWOC (Present by Weight on Cement) silica fume increase the water quantity in cement slurry that improve its durability and to reduce the strength retrogression in High Temperature High Pressure (HTHP) environment. Results were achieved through HTHP OFITE Viscometer (Model 1100).

9

Authors: Gulshan Nematova, Mobashar Rehman, Aamir Amin, Manzoor Ahmed Hashmani

The Software Development (SD) process requires collaboration and sharing of information in order to achieve the best results required and Social Media (SM) has helped this process immensely. SM is frequently utilized by programmers to strengthen their SD tools. In particular, communication is a key component in collaborative development, when designing large-scale software. An engineer can ask his colleagues around the world for help in solving problems or contact users for feedback. However, there is still a need to do research about the benefits as well as limitation of usage of SM in SD process. This study examines research conducted from 2009 until 2019 to help the researchers as well as businesses to learn more about the relation between SM and SD. Inclusion and exclusion criteria is imposed to sort out the research done during the mentioned time period. Type of data extracted from the selected papers includes authors’ name(s), title of the paper, year of publication, type of publication, country of origin, method used, data analysis, study setting and data collection approach. Furthermore, this paper answers to the questions posed in the study, such as what are the potential limitations of using SM for SD, and what reasons are given by the organizations for utilization of SM for SD. This paper provides a systematic literature review of 31 studies on SM and SD.

10

Authors: Gulzar Ahmad, Muhammad Inayatullah Babar, Siddique Ali, Faheem Ali

Low BW (Bandwidth) is a major limitation of microstrip antennas. A patch antenna having a large BW for Ku band applications is demonstrated in this manuscript. The skills of Defected Ground Structure (DGS) and defected driven patch were engaged to widen its BW. Four slices have also been confiscated from the ground for upgrading various characteristics. It is established on the basis of this study that it can be employed in spectrum defining and bands. It puts forward an impedance BW of 8GHz, which is appropriate for numerous applications. The ground/substrate of the structure under consideration is 22×10-3m long and 10×103m wide and these specifications imply that the volume of this design is very small. The entire structure’s utmost thickness is 1.67×10-3m. It can be easily installed in relevant handy electronic devices. Investigations and analysis in this case are made with computer software known as Computer Simulation Technology. The simulated design exhibits a very good gain and efficiency. Deviation in the gain of the simulated design was from 4.4 7.3dBi and it guaranteed the highest efficiency of 98.6%. Some minor changes in the antenna resulted in expansion in the BW from 8GHz to 14GHz. The return loss which was recorded at frequency of 18.15GHz went to 48.97dB and the mentioned changes assured the uppermost efficiency of 83.1%. The fabricated antenna achieved a bandwidth of 28GHz which is far better than the simulated bandwidth.

10

Authors: Heman Das Lohano; Fateh Muhammad Mari

Pakistan is a highly vulnerable country in the world to climate change. It is ranked among the five most affected countries in the world. Sindh, among the provinces of Pakistan, is located in the southern part and it stands to suffer not only directly from local climatic and weather changes but also from the weather activities in the upstream Indus River and from the coastal environments. This study aims to examine the past trend and future projections of climate variables, assess the climate change impacts on agriculture sector, and recommend adaptation measures for Sindh. The results show that there is statistically significant trend in the temperature and precipitation in some parts of Sindh. The results from climate change projections show that the average annual temperature in Sindh by the end of 21st century may increase by 2 to 5 0C depending on various emission scenarios. Furthermore, the climate change in Sindh is likely to decrease productivity of agriculture and household income. The study recommends infrastructural development, technological change, institutional reforms, information sharing, and effective regulations to make agriculture sector and other related sectors resilient to climate change.

11

Authors: Bushra Shamshad, Junaid Sagheer Siddiqui

This paper presents Hotelling T2 as a procedure for the testing of significance difference between the item response probabilities (ωij′s) of classes in a Latent Class Model (LCM). Parametric bootstrap technique is used in order to generate samples for ωij′s. These samples are based on the estimated parameters of 2-class latent model. The estimation of parameters in either situation is done using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm through Maximum likelihood method. The hypothesis under consideration is whether the response probabilities (ωij′s) are equal against each item in both the classes. { H0 : ωi1 = ωi2. against H1 : =ωi1 ≠ ωi2}. If the test exhibits significant difference between response probabilities in both classes, it will be a clear indication of a presence of latent variable. We consider both training and testing data sets to develop the test. In order to apply Hotelling T2 test the basic assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance are also checked. Chi-square goodness of fit test is used for assessing normal distribution to be good fitted on the hypothesized (bootstrap samples) based on 2-class latent model parameters for each data and Bartlett test to check heterogeneity of variances in ωij′s. Moreover, our procedure produces a minimum standard error of estimates as compared to those obtained through the package in R.Gui environment

12

Authors: Faiza Khadim, Iram Noreen, Abdul Hafeez Muhammad

Battery driven computing devices such as laptops and cellular phones have become a necessity in this era. Mobile applications help us in daily life activities and with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) new opportunities are open up to automate different task. However, batteries have their own limitations such as weight, cost, and size. Multiple applications and background processes running in parallel easily drain phone’s battery within 24 hours consequently annoying users by limited battery capacity. Repeated charge, recharge cycles steadily diminish the full capacity of batteries resulting in the immense decreased performance of the device. Therefore, mobile devices and mobile applications are in great need of energy-aware modules. In this paper, a survey is performed to identify the needs of the mobile user in the context of energy consumption problem. The results of survey lead authors to propose a middle layer energy aware framework to address this issue. The proposed framework highly relies on the association between the operating system, application, and end user. The main objective of the proposed framework is to maintain an energy-aware capability to facilitate end user and mobile applications. The major components of the proposed framework are processing engine, application classifier, application resource management, system profiling, application modes, power estimator and power policy management. Proposed framework also offers a policy manager algorithm based on research community feedback and survey's results. Proposed framework emphasizes on energy efficient execution of mobile operations for end user and operating systems.

13

Authors: Saman Hina, Raheela Asif, Syed Abbas Ali

It is imperative in a medical domain that protection of information does not allow an individual to be overlooked. In medical domain, research community encourages use of real-time datasets for research purposes. These real-time datasets contain structured and unstructured (natural language free text) information that can be useful to researchers in various disciplines including computational linguistics. On the other hand, these real-time datasets cannot be distributed without anonymization of Protected Health Information (PHI). The information of PHI (such as Name, age, address, etc.) that can identify an individual is unethical. Therefore, we present a rule-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) anonymization system using a challenging corpus containing medical narratives and ICD-10 codes (medical codes). This anonymization module can be used for pre-processing the corpus containing identifiable information. The corpus used in this research contains '2534' PHIs in '1984' medical records in total. 15% of the labelled corpus was used for improvement of guidelines in the identification and classification of PHI groups and 85% was held for the evaluation. Our anonymization system follows two step process: (1) Identification and cataloging PHIs with four PHI categories ('Patients Name', 'Doctors Name', 'Other Name [Names other than patients and doctors]', 'Place Name'), (2) Anonymization of PHIs by replacing identified PHIs with their respective PHI categories. Our method uses basic language processing, dictionaries, rules and heuristics to identify, classify and anonymize PHIs with PHI categories. We use standard metrics for evaluation and our system outperforms against human annotated gold standard with 100% of F-measure by increasing 39% from baseline results, which proves the reliability of data usage for research.

19

Authors: Hafiz Muhammad Awais, Tahir Nadeem Malik, Aftab Ahmad

Economic Dispatch (ED) is one of the major concerns for the efficient and economical operation of the modern power system. Actual ED problem is non-convex in nature due to Ramp Rate Limits (RRL), Valve-Point Loading Effects (VPLE), and Prohibited Operating Zones (POZs). It is generally converted into a convex problem as mathematical programming based approaches cannot handle the non-convex cost functions except dynamic programming, which also suffers from the curse of dimensionality. Heuristic techniques are potential solution methodologies for solving the non-convex ED problem. Artificial Algae Algorithm (AAA), a recent meta-heuristic optimization approach showed remarkable results on certain MATLAB benchmark functions but its application on industrial problem such as ED is yet to be explored. In this paper, AAA is used to investigate convex and non-convex ED problem due to valve-point effects and POZs while considering the transmission losses. The robustness and effectiveness of the proposed approach are validated by implementing it on IEEE standard test systems (3, 6, 13 and 40 unit Test Systems), which are widely addressed in the literature. The simulation results are promising when compared with other well-known evolutionary algorithms, showing the potential and stability of this algorithm.

6

Authors: Muhammad Khan Memon, Ubedullah Ansari, Habib U Zaman Memon

The residual oil after primary or secondary oil recovery can be recovered by the methods of EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery). The objective of this study is screening the surfactants that generate maximum stable foam in the presence of brine salinity at 92oC. Laboratory experiments have been performed to examine and compare the stability of generated foam by individual and blended surfactants in the synthetic brine water. AOS C14-16 (Alpha Olefin Sulfonate) and SDS (Sodium Dodecyl Sulfonate) were selected as main surfactants. Aqueous stability test of AOS C14-16 and SDS with brine water salinity 62070ppm was performed at 92oC. AAS (Alcohol Alkoxy Sulfate) was blended with SDS and AOS C14-16. The solution was stable in the presence of brine salinity at same conditions. Salt tolerance experimental study revealed that AOS C14-16 did not produce precipitates at 92oC. Further, the foam stability of surfactant blend was performed. Result shows that, the maximum life time of generated foam was observed by using blend of 0.2wt% SDS+0.2wt% AOS+0.2wt% AS-1246 and 0.2wt% AOS+0.2wt% IOSC15-18+0.2wt% AAS surfactants as compared to the foam generated by individual surfactants. The success of generated foam by these surfactant solutions in the presence of brine water is the primary screening of surfactant stability and foamability for EOR applications in reservoirs type of reservoirs.

8

Authors: Shahid Amjad, Nuzhat Khan, Saira Ishaq

Biodiversity survey between Cape Monze and Churna Island was carried out for the assessment of coral assemblages in the area. During the present study, diving surveys were conducted to document the living corals that included deep sea coral, Coelenterates, Bryozoans, Gorgonia (Sea Fan), Scleractinian, (Stony Corals) Cnidaria (Hydroids), Porites (Small Polyp Stony), Pocilopora (Cauliflower Corals), Acropora (Hard Corals), sea urchins, sea anemones, coral fish spp, sea slugs, stone fish and bivalves were observed and documented. To have a better understanding of the distribution pattern “Shannon Weiner Biodiversity Index” for species diversity “H” (0.845-1.176) and evenness “J” (0.962-0.937) were calculated, the values indicate that the coral species were evenly distributed and did not show any significant variation in the area. Budding coral communities were observed at the sedimentary rock of Churna in patches, and showed a random distribution behavior all along the surveyed area. Random, scattered and aggregate distribution patterns of corals may be due to the wave beaten physical environment of Churna Island that do not allow sustainable growth of coral communities. Moreover, the high energy waves and water currents destablize and erode the sedimentary substrate on which corals grow. The corals are therefore unable to establish themselves to form a natural reef due to loss of natural living and non-living substrate. The ecology of Churna Island also under the influence of nearby coastal industries, and the Hub River influx causing floods in the SW monsoon period that may destablize rubble and increase the seawater turbidity level. These environmental factors contributing to the deterioration of present day corals, and larval settlement. It may be concluded that biological resources are renewable and can even increase with proper management techniques. Breakwater wall and artificial substrate must be encouraged to further facilitate the growth and development of Corals in the area.

9

Authors: Heman Das Lohano, Fateh Muhammad Marri

Water resources in Sindh province of Pakistan are under significant pressure due to increasing and conflicting water demand from municipalities for domestic users, agriculture and industries, and requirements of environmental flows. Population growth and climate change are likely to pose serious challenges to households and economic sectors that depend on water. This study estimates the present water demand from municipalities, agriculture and industries, and its future projections by the year 2050 in Sindh. The study also evaluates the impact of climate change on sectoral water demand and assesses the water requirements for the environmental flows. The results show that presently the total water demand for these sectors in Sindh is 44.06 Million Acre Feet (MAF). Agriculture is the largest consumer of water, accounting for 95.24 percent of the total water demand. Municipal water demand accounts for 2.61 percent while industrial water demand accounts for 1.88 percent. The demand for water in these sectors is expected to rise by 10 percent from 2018 to 2050. Moreover, depending on climate change scenario, the total water demand in these three sectors is likely to rise by 16 to 25 percent from 2018 to 2050. In additions, water requirements for the environmental flows have been indicated as 10 MAF in the National Water Accord of 1991. The findings of this study call for policy measures and strategies for management of water resources in Sindh.

10

Authors: Faheem Ali, Muhammad Naeem Arbab, Gulzar Ahmad, Majid Ashraf, Muhammad Sarim

Pakistan is faced with energy crises from the last two decades. Generation cannot balance the load demands of the electricity consumers. Power delivery systems are generally old-fashioned and overloaded. They are unable to provide consistent and uninterrupted supply to commercial, industrial, and domestic loads. Generally speaking, the Power Systems consist of loads that are inductive and resistive in nature. Heavy machinery, induction motors, and arc furnaces are heavily inductive in nature. Inductive loads when operated in a weak power system results in lagging VARs (Volt Ampere Reactive) and poor voltage regulation, which must be balanced by the same number of leading VARs in order to ensure unity power factor and thus helps in improving the voltage profile. At times the reactive VARs injected may not be sufficient to balance the VARs requires by the system, but still the power factor is improved up to some extent. In hot and humid climatic conditions, air-cooling system and chillers greatly burdens the grids. Such loads require excessive reactive VARs, and if not offered with ample reactive power, causes severe voltage drops in distribution system. To manage low voltages and power-factor, household users use automatic voltage regulators while industries connect capacitor banks. Voltage regulators control output voltage within the required limits at the expense of excessive line current from transformer, which may overburden it. Moreover, with each operation of tap changer, current rises which further intensifies line losses. Static capacitors provide stable voltage but repeated variations in load demands reliable and vigorous voltage regulation. This investigation aims to come up with a power quality improvement scheme which would deliver instantaneous control of power (reactive) with SVC (Static VAR Compensator) thus overcoming the shortcomings of step-wise banks of capacitors and or voltage regulators. Simulation work is carried out in MATLAB/SIMULINK and the results are compliance with IEEE Standards for SVCs. The device can offer steady state as well as dynamic VAR compensation under changing load conditions. Result showed considerable improvement both in terms of response time and power factor. Switching time has been improved to less than 1/10th fraction of a second which in previous simulations was 0.7 seconds approximately. Initial power factor without disturbance and without compensation was recorded to be 0.6 lagging, which after compensation was improved to 0.95 lagging. Similarly, in presence of disturbance without compensation the power factor fluctuated between 0.55 and 0.9 lagging, which after compensation was improved to 0.95 lagging and above throughout the course of operation.

10

Authors: Rahmatullah Shah, Muhammad Abid, Muhammad Farooq Qayyum

A field study was conducted to signify the use of sugarcane industrial and dairy farm wastes through composting and vermi-composting and application to tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum L) crop to evaluate any effects on growth, yield and fruit quality. Composts and vermi-composts of FM (Farm Manure), SB (Sugarcane Bagasse), SP (Sugarcane Pressmud), mixture of SB×SP×SE [sugarcane effluent (1:1:1)] @ 10 t ha1, respectively were applied before transplanting of nursery. The fertilizers NPK @ 81-76-76 kg ha-1 were also applied in all plots. Overall, there were significant (p≤0.05) impacts of treatments on agronomic and fruit quality traits. Plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves, number of fruits and yield were increased by 37, 67, 62, 59 and 24% with FMVC (Farm Manure Vermi-Compost) treatment over control. There was 6% increase in soluble solids of tomato fruit in FMVC plots compared with control treatment. However, maximum titrable acidity (0.0081mg citric acid/100g) in fruit juice was found in MVC plots. TN (Total Nitrogen) concentration of tomato fruit juice was increased by 1.74% in with FMVC over control treatments. Maximum lycopene contents (22.19 mg kg-1) were observed in FMVC plots as compared to all other treatments. It could be concluded that all treatments improved growth, yield and quality of fruit compared with control; whereas FMVC treatment performed better.

11

Authors: Nosheen Qamar, Ali Afzal Malik

Many different factors influence the quality of software. Among the most important of these factors is software complexity. One way to improve software quality, therefore, is to minimize its complexity making it more understandable and maintainable. The design phase of the software development life cycle plays an instrumental role in fostering quality in software. Seasoned designers often use past design best practices codified in the form of design patterns to make their designs and the resultant code more elegant, robust, and resilient to change. Little work, however, has been done to empirically assess the quantitative impact of design patterns on software complexity. This research is an attempt to fill this gap. A comparative analysis of before and after versions of program pairs written without and with design patterns was performed for all twenty three GoF (Gang of Four) design patterns. These program pairs were collected (or, in some cases, developed) and compared with respect to their complexity and size. The results of this comparative analysis reveal that the cyclomatic complexity of the programs written using design patterns was less for most of the design patterns as compared to the programs written without using design patterns. However, the values of CK metrics, number of classes, and software size SLOC (Source Lines of Code) increased when design patterns were used.

12

Authors: Muhammad Mateen Afzal Awan, Tahir Mahmood

Modern-day world is facing problems such as, electricity generation deficiency, mounting energy demand, GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions, reliability and soaring prices. To resolve these issues, sustainable and renewable energy resources like SPV (Solar Photovoltaic) would be quite helpful. In this regard, the extraction of maximum power from SPV array in PSC (Partial Shading Weather Conditions) remains a challenge. Creation of multiple power peaks in the P-V (Power-Voltage) curve of a PV array due to partial shading, makes it difficult to track GMPP (Global Maximum Power Point) out of multiple power peaks known as LMPP (Local Maximum Power Points). Conventional algorithms are not able to perform in any condition other than UWC (Uniform Weather Condition). Nature inspired SC (Soft Computing) algorithms efficiently track the GMPP in PSC. The top performing SC algorithm named, FPA (Flower Pollination Algorithm) presents an efficient solution for GMPP tracking in PSCs. In this paper, the efficiency, accuracy and tracking speed of FPA algorithm is optimized. Comparison of the proposed OFPA (Optimized Flower Pollination Algorithm) and the existing FPAs is performed for zero shading condition, weak PSC, strong PSC, and changing weather conditions. In zero shading conditions, improvement of 0.7% in efficiency and 33% in tracking speed is achieved. In weak shading conditions, improvement of 0.97% in efficiency and 32.2% in tracking speed is achieved. In strong shading conditions, improvement of 0.24% in efficiency and 30.6% in tracking speed is achieved. OFPA is also tested for changing weather conditions (entering from Case-1 to Cae-3) and it retains its outstanding performance in the changing weather conditions. Simulations are performed in MATLAB/Simulink.

14

Authors: Muhammad Sulaiman, Muhammad Sulaman, Abdelwahed Hamdi, Zubair Hussain Hussain

In modern and large scale power distribution topologies, directional relays play an important role in the operation of an electrical system. These relays must be coordinated optimally so that their overall operating time is reduced to a minimum. They are sensor protection devices for the power systems and must be coordinated properly. The present work uses a metaheuristic optimization technique known as the Plant Propagation Algorithm (PPA) in order to suggest improved solutions for the optimization problem of coordination of directional overcurrent relays (DOCRs). We have obtained comparatively better solutions for the overall operating times taken by relays fitted on important positions in the system. Our findings are useful in isolating the faulty lines efficiently and in keeping the continuity of power supply. The difference in response times taken in coordination between primary relays and corresponding backup relays is minimized. The output of our experiments is compared with various algorithms and classical optimization techniques, which are found in the literature. Moreover, graphical analyses are presented for each problem to further clarify the results.

18

Authors: Faria Kanwal, Mariam Rehman, Malik Muhammad Asif

With the rapid growth of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), the traditional educational system has been restructured into e-learning systems. E-learning adoption and acceptance is in rudimentary stages of development in Pakistan. Therefore, it is imperative to understand and evaluate the critical factors of technology adoption and acceptance considering the moderating effect of individual differences (gender and experience) based on Technology Acceptance Model. Quantitative analysis was conducted on 356 learners from the Virtual University of Pakistan. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test research models. The results illustrate that the perception of and intention to adopt technology are highly dependent on gender and experience in using e-learning systems. Computer anxiety and social influence are significant predictors of elearning adoption in female learners whereas social influence and enjoyment is significant predictors in less experienced learners than more experienced learners.

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Authors: Saeed Ullah Jan, Fawad Qayum, Ajab Khan

The SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is an application and presentation layer signaling protocol used for initiating, continuing and terminating multimedia session for the end user. It gains much attention of the researchers because it is exposed to several threats and noticed challenging vulnerabilities from time to time. Consequently, the security of SIP is a crucial task and many efforts have been made by different researchers and tried to divert the attention towards its solution. But still, no one claims with conviction about a foolproof secure mechanism for SIP. As users extensively use SIP services, the mutual authentication and key agreement among the participants is an important issue. So, robust authentication and key agreement scheme are mandatory for enhancing security, legitimacy and better complexities. Therefore, we present an improved three-factor authentication scheme that caters all the weakness and known attacks in Mishra et al. scheme. The proposed scheme not only guarantees for security but performance can also be made lightweight. As performance and security contradict each other, the change in one inversely affects the other. The proposed scheme has been analyzed both formally using BAN (Burrows-Abadi-Needham) logic and ProVerif1.93 software verification toolkit, and informally using assumptions which show a delicate balance of security with performance.