ABSTRACT . Expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam is a lightweight material that has been used in engineering applications long time ago. Its density is about a hundredth of that of normal weight soil. Its thermal insulation properties are excellent with stiffness and compression strength comparable to medium clay. It has been utilized in several engineering applications such as in reducing settlement below embankments, sound and vibration damping, reducing lateral pressure on substructures, reducing stresses on rigid buried conduits and several others. A new application for EPS in civil engineering is provided in the study as an example for the potential use of EPS in the civil engineering profession. Reducing the dynamic loads on earth retaining structures utilizing EPS-Geofoam is analyzed.The results of this study point towards the main conclusion that EPS geofoam is the future material of promise in various civil engineering applications. SABIC polystyrene has comparable densities and stiffness such that it can be used in all such applications.

Abstract. A numerical model of heat transfer for predicting solar cell temperature in a high concentrating photovoltaic module using non-uniform incident illumination is presented. The PV module, based on a three-junction solar cell with a front contact to the cell,anti-reflected glass coating, and an active aluminum back plate is modeled. The Gaussian distribution is adopted to simulate the irregularity in the incident radiation. The cooling water is enforced to flow inside a rectangular duct behind the solar cell assembly to lower the cell’s operating temperature. The continuity equation, momentum equation, energy equation for the fluid, and energy equations for the solid materials in the solar cell assembly are solved using a numerical marching technique. The effects of the standard deviation of light distribution, position of the maximum radiation on the cell surface, Reynold's number, and concentration ratio on the temperature of the solar cell are illustrated. At moderatevalues of concentration ratio, water wasfound to be an effectivecooling medium in reducing solar cell temperatures to acceptable levels. However, for high concentrations, plainwater-cooling system was unable to cool the solar cell adequately when the system is subjectedto a sharp non-uniformillumination distribution.

ABSTRACT. Context-aware system (CAS) presents completely novel opportunities for users and application developers through gathering context data and adapting systems behavior based on current situation. Particularly in relation to various types of mobile devices, high value mechanisms are utilized to increase usability of it.The usage of CAS hasbeen increased nowadays. The main objective of the CAS is to provide intelligence that has ability to detect context on behalf of the user. Modelling context-aware system is still developing and till date onlya small number of researches triedto present modellingofCAS. This reviewfocuses on the context aware system and conceptual design framework with respect to their principles and merits. This explains the two types of modelling CAS; the first one, when the context is certain and the second, when the context is uncertain.Each type has its own techniques. It is believed that this survey will make it easy for the software engineers to select the appropriate technique for the system.

Abstract. This paper advocates and demonstrates the utility of the Karnaugh-map, as a pictorial manual tool, in the Boolean analysis (BA)of social and political problems, in general, and in problems of peace research, in particular, as exemplified herein by the problem of war termination. Analysis is performed for both the appearance and absence of a specified phenomenon for the cases where (a) the logical remainders (don’t cares) are ignored (actually nullified), and (b) the don’t cares are assigned certain deliberate but independentvalues, and (c) faithful representation is used via a partially-defined function whose asserted part constitutes the definite (certain) causes of the phenomenon while its don’t-care part is a disjunction of its potential (uncertain) causes. The paper also presents several novel extensions of BA in which the don’t-care entries in the Karnaugh-map are manipulated in an attempt to make the output function positive/negative in, independent of, or symmetric in some of its arguments, to assignan importance metric for each of these arguments, to obtain a threshold representation for it, or to fit a pre-specified hypothesis. An explanation is given for the relation between BA per se, and two variants thereof, namely Crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA)and Coincidence Analysis (CNA).