Study of root architecture by overexpressing the maize Rtcs gene in tobacco.

2016

The Architecture of the Persian Period in the Levant

The earliest scholars were not concerned about preparing extensive investigations linking the Persian-period building remains excavated in the entire Levant together. Moreover, the research interests of scholars caused some impediments to the study of this period viz in the last decades; the Achaemenid period has been neglected by the scholars who -in turn- focused on the earlier and later periods for religious reasons. Too, while some regions have been studied abundantly, but it was not the case in other areas, which makes our knowledge is incomplete. From the explanation side, some scholars try to interpret the architectural remains from an ethnic perspective or unsubstantiated personal fancies, so their arguments were utterly lacking any objectivity. This thesis explores what are the Persian architectural and ornamental impacts on the Levantine architecture and the relations between Persian-period sites in Syria-Palestine region. Too, the architectural remains and their contents benefited us to clarify the settlement patterns in the regions being discussed. The author analyzed the ground plans of the buildings and their architectural features and ornamental motifs by conducting a descriptive, analytical, and interpretative study. He also conducted comparisons with similar buildings outside the Levant, especially in Fars to obtain a more comprehensive and systematic study, and then extracting any direct or indirect Persian influences. This has given us a better understanding of the nature of the social, political, and religious life in the entire Levant and the knowledge gap has been bridged to a satisfying extent. This study has demonstrated a few of the Achaemenid impacts, especially on the northern coastline of the Levant.

Cross-correlations between weather variables in Australia

The information on climate variations is essential for the research of many subjects, such as the performance of buildings and agricultural production. However, recorded meteorological data are often incomplete. There may be a limited number of locations recorded, while the number of recorded climatic variables and the time intervals can also be inadequate. Therefore, the hourly data of key weather parameters as required by many building simulation programmes are typically not readily available. To overcome this gap in measured information, several empirical methods and weather data generators have been developed. They generally employ statistical analysis techniques to model the variations of individual climatic variables, while the possible interactions between different weather parameters are largely ignored. Based on a statistical analysis of 10 years historical hourly climatic data over all capital cities in Australia, this paper reports on the finding of strong correlations between several specific weather variables. It is found that there are strong linear correlations between the hourly variations of global solar irradiation (GSI) and dry bulb temperature (DBT), and between the hourly variations of DBT and relative humidity (RH). With an increase in GSI, DBT would generally increase, while the RH tends to decrease. However, no such a clear correlation can be found between the DBT and atmospheric pressure (P), and between the DBT and wind speed. These findings will be useful for the research and practice in building performance simulation.

Communication Architecture Design for Real-Time Networked Control Systems

Networked control over data networks has received increasing attention in recent years. Among many problems in networked control systems (NCSs) is the need to reduce control latency and jitter and to deal with packet dropouts. This paper introduces our recent progress on a queuing communication architecture for real-time NCS applications, and simple strategies for dealing with packet dropouts. Case studies for a middle-scale process or multiple small-scale processes are presented for TCP/IP based real-time NCSs. Variations of network architecture design are modelled, simulated, and analysed for evaluation of control latency and jitter performance. It is shown that a simple bandwidth upgrade or adding hierarchy does not necessarily bring benefits for performance improvement of control latency and jitter. A co-design of network and control is necessary to maximise the real-time control performance of NCSs

SKMA - A Key Management Architecture for SCADA Systems

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are widely used in the management of critical infrastructure such as electricity and water distrubution systems. Currently there is little understanding of how to best protect SCADA systems from malicious attacks. We review the constraints and requirements for SCADA security and propose a suitable architecture (SKMA) for secure SCADA communications. The architecture includes a proposed key management protocol (SKMP). We compare the architecture with a previous proposal from Sandia Labs.