Urban planners propose that open spaces between developments can greatly contribute to enhancing the quality of life in urban areas. This study concentrates on enhancing social and physical activities at residential neighborhoods. Survey responses of the residents of an urban block in Abu Dhabi combined with spatial data was used to conduct the analysis of this study. A population of around 200 volunteer residents from the study area of Al Zaa'faranah in Abu Dhabi were surveyed for their perception, attitude, and behavior in the block. The survey measures some features of existing urban blocks such as accessibility, safety from traffic, safety from crime, easiness of walking and cycling, and social cohesion and inclusion. The study finds a correlation between these measures and what influence they reflect on resident's behavior and daily activities. The outcome of the study will help to develop standards and regulations for future developments in Abu Dhabi.
The question of preserving the poem's form or content has been a subject of great debate amongst translation practitioners and scholars. To render a source poem into the target language, the translator requires certain tools and strategies. It is crucial that the translator of poetry possesses the adequate discourse (Gee, 1989) that enables him/ her to produce a target text (TT) poem. Poetry is not mere language; rather it is a reflection of the original poet's style and technique in order to convey a certain message or theme. It is argued here, that translating poetry must include the form and content to varied extents, depending on the nature of the poem and the dominant attributes that particular poem possesses. Regardless of the nature of these characteristics, translating poetry remains a challenging endeavor which requires great cognitive efforts on the part of the translator in order to produce the 'good poem'
Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have emerged as an alternative to traditional fossil fuel-based vehicles. Their fuel flexibility allows for reduced dependency on fossil fuels due to an in-built battery. Thus, generating lower emissions than traditional vehicles. Little focus has been placed on the potential utilization of excess power within a power grid for PHEVs. The model was developed in the GAMS? system. The proposed model can help to determine strategic and operational decisions such as: 1) optimal power infrastructure for PHEVs utilizing excess electricity from a regional/national grid; 2) required upgrades in existing power grids to meet future demands.
In this work, the design and analysis of two piezoelectric based harvesters are conducted. Piezoelectric harvesters convert mechanical vibration from ambient to electrical energy. A CoventorWare 3D simulation tools have been used to simulate the harvested voltage, input impedance, maximum displacement and mechanical resonance for both structures. It has been found that deflection of hollow cylinder is higher than the plate and delivers more power to the load under the same applied conditions and pressures.
We present a design of a compact broadband high-speed silicon electro-optic switch based on wavelength insensitive directional couplers implementation. The device consists of a three directional coupler stages separated by constant waveguide phase delay section. An active p-i-n diode phase shifter is embedded in one arm of both the phase delay sections. The switch is only 154?m long and has two 57?m phase shifters. The switch maintains the spectral bandwidth of 45nm with lower than -19 dB crosstalk level, both in the on and off states with a power consumption of only 3.2mW. The switch is capable of switching within 6ns and has aV ???? L ???? of 0.01254 V.cm at 1.51?m and -30dB crosstalk level.
The experimental observation of the dynamic voltage-displacement relationship for a thermal microactuator shows a complex characteristic indicating the simultaneous existence of electrical/thermal energy storage and mechanical energy dissipation mechanisms. To completely characterize these mechanisms and yet have a simple representation for control, a new electro-thermal model using lumped modeling based on circuit elements is developed. The interaction between the non-electronic and the electronic phenomena of the system can be easily modeled using this approach. The Lumped-Element electro-thermal dynamic model accounts for both conduction and convection losses. Experimental results along with numerical simulations with MATLAB and ANSYS are used to validate the accuracy of the proposed modeling approach.
In this work we present a process-aware modeling based design flow for unimorph piezoelectric energy harvesters (EH). We demonstrate the device geometry optimization on a simple cantilever EH with a proofmass and the electrode placement optimization on a doubly clamped EH device. The devices were realized using a CMOS-compatible SOI MEMS technology with a wafer-level vacuum-package employing AlN as the piezoelectric material.
The emerge of Internet of Things (IoT) led to a wide spread of infrastructure-less networks called Ad Hoc Networks, where new protocols were needed to adjust to the new requirements of such a network. The Cluster-Based Quality of Service Optimized Link State Routing protocol has shown to be the best multimedia protocol for it. This paper verifies and validates the assumption about Cluster-Based QoS-OLSR protocol and its impact on the network in terms of MPRs percentage and number of alive nodes after a period of time. A comparison is shown to illustrate the improvement of the network when applying Cluster-Based QoS-OLSR instead of OLSR on the same network.
International Standards Organization (ISO) is a camera setting that enables professional photographers to take pictures under poor light conditions by controlling the sensor's sensitivity. This is achievable under the expense of introducing noise in the image that is caused by the camera's sensor. The noise has a random nature, and its characteristics differ between chrominance and luminance channels. In this paper, the noise that results from high ISO will be investigated by filtering these two channels separately. The results quantitatively using Structural Similarity (SSIM) and Signal-to-Noise Ratio SNR).
Smart city applications are developed to provision the urbanization streams and the massive development all over the world. This can be achieved by offering real time responses to new challenges faced by different sectors as in health, transportation, water and energy. Smart meter is one of the smart city applied solutions which facilitate to overcome the increased demand on electricity. This paper examines smart meter in the context of energy sector to exploit its related features in the process of Demand Side Management (DSM) to facilitate energy efficiency. It studies the future of integrating client in DSM through developing a client centric and energy efficient Smartphone based application. The feasibility of such application is reflected on the smart meter business model adopted in Abu Dhabi. Consequently, fundamentals are established to initiate cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the rolling-out of advanced metering infrastructure.
