This paper presents an improved technique on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. The procedure is applied on Single Machine with Infinite Bus (SMIB) system with power system stabilizer (PSS) at three different loading regimes. The simulations are made by using MATLAB software. The results show that by using Improved Ant Colony Optimization (IACO) the system will give better performance with less number of iterations as it compared with a previous modification on ACO. In addition, the probability of selecting the arc depends on the best ant performance and the evaporation rate.

Low bearing capacity of weak soil under shallow footings represents one of construction problems.
Kaolin with water content converges to liquid limit used to represent the weak soil under shallow
footing prototype. On the other hand, fly ash, which can be defined as undesirable industrial waste
material, was used to improve the bearing capacity of the soft soil considered in this research. The soft
soil was prepared in steel box (36×36×25) cm and shallow square footing prototype (6×6) cm were
used .Group of physical and chemical tests were conducted on kaolin and fly ash. The soft soil was
improved by a bed of compacted fly ash placed under the footing with dimensions equal to that of
footing but with different de

Porous silicon (PS) layers are prepared by anodization for
different etching current densities. The samples are then
characterized the nanocrystalline porous silicon layer by X-Ray
Diffraction (XRD), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Fourier
Transform Infrared (FTIR). PS layers were formed on n-type Si
wafer. Anodized electrically with a 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mA/cm2
current density for fixed 10 min etching times. XRD confirms the
formation of porous silicon, the crystal size is reduced toward
nanometric scale of the face centered cubic structure, and peak
becomes a broader with increasing the current density. The AFM
investigation shows the sponge like structure of PS at the lower
current density porous begi

In this study, pebble bed as an absorber and storage material was placed in a south facing, flat plate air-type solar collector at fixed tilt angle of (45°). The effect of this material and differ- ent parameters on collector efficiency has been investigated experimentally and
theoretically. Two operation modes were employed to study the performance of the solar air heater. An inte- grated mode of continuous operation of the system during the period of (11:00 am – 3:00 pm) and non-integrated mode in which the system stored the solar energy through the day then used the stored energy during the period of (3:00 pm – 8:00 pm). The results of parametric study in case of continuous operating showed that the maximum average temperatur

In the field of civil engineering, the adoption and use of Falling Weight Deflectometers (FWDs) is seen as a response to the ever changing and technology-driven world. Specifically, FWDs refer to devices that aid in evaluating the physical properties of a pavement. This paper has assessed the concepts of data processing, storage, and analysis via FWDs. The device has been found to play an important role in enabling the operators and field practitioners to understand vertical deflection responses upon subjecting pavements to impulse loads. In turn, the resultant data and its analysis outcomes lead to the backcalculation of the state of stiffness, with initial analyses of the deflection bowl occurring in conjunction with the measured or assum

An approach for hiding information has been proposed for securing information using Slanlet transform and the T-codes. Same as the wavelet transform the Slantlet transform is better in compression signal and good time localization signal compression than the conventional transforms like (DCT) discrete cosine transforms. The proposed method provides efficient security, because the original secret image is encrypted before embedding in order to build a robust system that is no attacker can defeat it. Some of the well known fidelity measures like (PSNR and AR) were used to measure the quality of the Steganography image and the image after extracted. The results show that the stego-image is closed related to the cover image, with (PSNR) Peak Si

The biometric-based keys generation represents the utilization of the extracted features from the human anatomical (physiological) traits like a fingerprint, retina, etc. or behavioral traits like a signature. The retina biometric has inherent robustness, therefore, it is capable of generating random keys with a higher security level compared to the other biometric traits. In this paper, an effective system to generate secure, robust and unique random keys based on retina features has been proposed for cryptographic applications. The retina features are extracted by using the algorithm of glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) that provides promising results through the experiments using the standard retina databases. Additionally, in order t