مؤتمر أبحاث طلبة الدراسات العليا في االمارات العربية المتحدة

PROGRAM GUIDE 20-21 March 2017 Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates

Organizer & Host by Supporting Partners

UAEGSRC Table of Contents

About UAE GSRC 5 Message from the Steering Committee Chair & the General 7 Chair Message from the Executive Chair 9 Message from the Organizing Committee & Technical 11 Program Committee Chair Conference Committees 13 Organizer 17 Conference Venue 19 Keynotes 21 Conference Program 25 Author-Session Index 70

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4 About UAE GSRC

Under the patronage of His Excellency Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, the Graduate Students Research Conference (UAE GSRC) is an exciting interdisciplinary academic event that will share graduate level research being conducted at universities across the UAE and internationally.

The main purpose of this conference is to provide opportunities for graduate students to share their research work and initiatives with each other, receive scholarly feedback and network professionally. The event will also enable graduate students to showcase their innovative scholarship to various sectors of industry and government, and get feedback on practical aspects that may enhance the value of their research. Prospective graduate students will be able to learn about the various research opportunities available at the participating academic institutions.

www.uaegsrc.ae

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Conference Chairs & Committees

6 Message from the Steering Committee Chair and the General Chair

On behalf of the Steering Committee of the 2017 UAE Graduate Students Research Conference (GSRC), we would like to welcome our guests, speakers and participants to have a fruitful, successful and enjoyable conference. Furthermore, we would like to express our gratitude and thanks to His Excellency Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, UAE for accepting to hold the conference under his patronage. The GSRC is an exciting interdisciplinary academic event to share the graduate level research being conducted at universities across the UAE, in particular, as well as internationally. The main purpose of this conference is to provide opportunities for graduate students to share their research work with each other, receive scholarly feedback and network professionally. The event will also enable graduate students to showcase their innovative scholarship and get feedback on practical aspects that may enhance the value of their research. Prospective graduate students will be able to learn about the various research opportunities available at the participating academic institutions. The GSRC provided an opportunity to graduate students to share their research results in specific areas under the following major tracks: - Engineering and Physical Sciences - Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health - Life Sciences - Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences In addition to the research papers under the above tracks, the conference has keynote speakers who will address current and future issues related to challenges in various fields. The UAE GSRC is endorsed by the UAE Council of Scientists. This valuable endorsement will undoubtedly ensure the conference builds on the success it achieved to date and expand further in the future. The success of this conference is attributed to those individuals who have worked hard to ensure smooth operations before and during the event. Hence, we would like to thank the members of the Steering Committee, the Organizing Committee and Students Organizing sub- committee, the Technical Program Committee, the reviewers of the papers and session chairs. We trust you will professionally benefit from the Conference as well as enjoy it socially.

Dr. Arif Al-Hammadi, Steering Committee Chair and General Chair

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Dr. Arif Sultan Al Hammadi is currently serving in Khalifa University of Science and Technology as the Interim Executive Vice President.

Dr. Arif is the chairman of the board of trustees of Emirates College of Advanced Education, a trustee at UAE water aid foundation and a board member and chair of the technology committee at Strata (Mubadala’s composite aero-structures manufacturing facility).

He is also the chair of the steering committee of the UAE graduate research conference (UAE_GRC), chairman of the executive committee of the UAE advanced network for research and education (ANKABUT), the chairman of Gulf Nuclear Infrastructure Institute, the founding chair of the UAE Mobile Application Contest (UAE_MAC), Member of the Academic Committee at Zayed University and the founding chair of the UAE ICT Research Forum (UAE_ICTRF). Also he is a member of The Emirates Scientists Council, a member of The Hamdan bin Mohammed Award for Innovation in Project Management and the Minister of Interior’s Award for Scientific Research. Dr. Arif is a holder of a PhD Degree in Telecommunications which he obtained from the Queen Mary, University of London (2000 and a holder of a Bachelor Degree in Telecommunications Engineering with Honors from Etisalat University College- UAE (1994).

Message from the Executive Chair

On behalf of the Conference Organizing and Technical Committees, I would like to welcome you all to the 2017 UAE Graduate Students Research Conference (UAE GSRC 2017). This is the third time the annual UAE GSRC, which is dedicated to graduate students, is being held. I would like to express our gratitude and thanks to His Excellency Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, UAE for accepting to hold the conference under his patronage. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the UAE Council of Scientists for endorsing the conference. I would also like to express our gratitude to the members of the Steering Committee for their valuable support and guidance. We would like to thank Khalifa University for accepting to lead the organization of the UAE GSRC 2017. Organizing a conference brings with it many challenges particularly when it tries to cover different disciplines and involves coordination between different institutions. Therefore, the Steering, Organizing and Technical Committees were designed to include representatives from different institutions and different disciplines. We also made sure that student representatives from different levels and disciplines are involved in the organization. In order to recognize this collaborative and all-inclusive effort, we would like to express our special thanks to Khalifa University, UAE University, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, The Petroleum Institute, American University of Sharjah, Zayed University and University of Sharjah for actively engaging in the various committees and for encouraging their graduate students to participate in the UAE GSRC 2017. Special thanks go to the keynote speakers for enhancing the technical program with their expertise. We would also like to thank the graduate students who contributed by submitting papers to the conference, the Technical Program Committee members, the track chairs, and the reviewers for putting together a very interesting and stimulating technical program. I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the members of the Organizing Committee and the various volunteers for their professionalism and valuable efforts in making the 2017 UAE GSRC a success. In particular, I would like to thank the Office of Communications & Business Development as well as other entities at Khalifa University for their support. Finally, I hope that your participation in the conference will be enjoyable and rewarding.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Mualla, Executive Chair

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H.E. Dr. Mohammed Al-Mualla, Undersecretary for Higher Education Academic Affairs at the Ministry of Education, (CEng, MIET, SMIEEE) holds a PhD degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and an MSc degree in Communication Systems and Signal Processing both from the University of Bristol, U.K. He also holds a BEng degree in Communications Engineering from Etisalat College of Engineering, United Arab Emirates. Since 2000 he has been with Khalifa University where he has served in many roles including Manager of the Abu Dhabi Campus and Interim Provost and Senior Associate Provost. He is currently the Senior Vice President for Research & Graduate Studies providing leadership and strategic direction for graduate programs and for university research and its engagement with industry, and in the management of university Intellectual Property, technology transfer, and research support services. During his career, Dr Al-Mualla has contributed to the teaching, research and administration sides of the University. He has taught a range of courses and has published widely in refereed international journals and conferences. He is the author of the book “Video Coding for Mobile Communication: Efficiency, Complexity and Resilience”, Academic Press, 2002. He has contributed to curriculum and program development, and participated in, and led, many accreditation activities by both local and international bodies. He has been a member and chair of numerous University committees, boards, and panels. Dr. Al-Mualla is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the ICT Fund and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Abu Dhabi Vocational Education and Training Institute. He is a member of the Senior Management Board of the Etisalat-British Telecom Innovation Center and chair of the Senior Management Board of the Mubadalah-KU Aerospace Innovation Center. He also served in the past on the Board of Directors of C4 Advanced Solutions and the Board of the Emirates Science Club. Dr. Al-Mualla is very active in professional societies and services. He is a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng.), Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), and Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Dr. Al-Mualla is the past Chairman of the IEEE UAE Section. He also served as the Vice Chairman from 2006 to 2012. He founded the IEEE UAE Signal Processing & Communication Joint Chapter and served as its founding chair from 2004 until 2012. Dr Al-Mualla has been a member of the steering, organizing and technical program committees of many international conferences, and has served on many editorial and reviewing boards of international journals and conferences.

Message from the Organizing Committee and Technical Program Committee Chair

On behalf of the Organizing Committee and the Technical Program Committee, we would like to welcome you all to the 2017 UAE Graduate Students Research Conference (GSRC). We would like to express our gratitude and thanks to His Excellency Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, UAE for accepting to hold the conference under his patronage. Furthermore, we would like to thank Khalifa University for hosting, sponsoring and leading the organization of GSRC 2017. This multidisciplinary conference received papers under the following major tracks: - Engineering and Physical Sciences - Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health - Life Sciences - Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences A total of 203 papers have been accepted for oral presentations at the conference. The papers are split among the conference tracks as follows: 175 Engineering and Physical Sciences, 19 papers Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 2 Clinical, Pre-Clinical and Health, and 7 Life Sciences. The program consists of 45 oral sessions covering the 4 major tracks of the conference. The Engineering and Physical Sciences track covers Aerospace Engineering, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Communication Engineering, Computer and Information Systems, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Energy and Fuels, Industrial Engineering, Material Science, Mechanical Engineering, Micro/Nano Devices, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Sustainability in Built Environment. Besides the exciting program of research papers, the conference has distinguished keynote speakers. Dr. Arif Al-Hammadi, EVP at Khalifa University, UK, will talk about Innovation in the UAE. Prof. Marcelo H. Ang, Jr., National University of Singapore, will talk about Robotics in Our Daily Lives. Engr. Sara Al-Amiri, Chair of Emirates Scientists Council and Deputy Project Manager and Science Lead of the Emirates Mars Mission (Hope), will talk about Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) 2020. Finally, the Organizing Committee and the Technical Program Committee would like to thank the keynote speakers, authors, session chairs, reviewers, and the volunteers who worked behind the scenes to make the technical program possible. We hope that all the participants will have an enjoyable conference.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri, Organizing Committee and Technical Program Committee Chair

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Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri (CEng, MIET, SMIEEE) is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies – College of Engineering, and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Khalifa University, UAE. He holds a PhD degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Bath, UK, an MSc degree in Communication Engineering and Digital Design from the University of Manchester, UK, and a B.Eng. in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, Canada. Dr. Al-Qutayri has been with Khalifa University since 1996, where he made significant contributions to teaching, research and service. Prior to joining Khalifa University, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at De Montfort University, UK. He also had short industrial appoints including a Principal Engineer position at Philips Semiconductors, Southampton, UK. During his academic career, which spans over 25 year, Dr. Al-Qutayri has taught many courses at both undergraduate as well as graduate levels mainly in electronic systems design. He also published numerous technical papers in peer reviewed international journals and conferences. He also contributed a number of book chapters and coauthored a book entitled “Digital Phase Look Loops: Architectures and Applications,” Springer, 2006. He also edited a book entitled “Smart Home Systems,” In-Tech, 2010. Dr. Al-Qutayri’s fields of research interest include embedded systems design, design and test of mixed-signal integrated circuits, and wireless sensor networks. As the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Dr. Al-Qutayri has overall responsibility of managing all the graduate programs in the College of Engineering at Khalifa University as well as overseeing the development and accreditation of new programs. In addition to this role, he is a member of a number of committees at the University. During his service at Khalifa University, Dr. Al-Qutayri also made significant contributions to undergraduate education including the development of courses and degree programs. He chaired the curriculum committee for a number of years. Dr. Al-Qutayri is very active in professional societies. This includes SMIEE (Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), MIET (Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology), and Chartered Engineer (C.Eng.), UK. His professional service includes membership of the steering, organizing and technical program committees of many international conferences.

12 Conference Committees

Steering Committee Dr. Arif Al-Hammadi, Khalifa University (Chair) Dr. Mohammed Al-Mualla, Khalifa University Dr. Ghaleb Alhadrami, UAE University Dr. Michael Allen, Zayed University Dr Steve Griffiths, Masdar Institute Dr. Marc Durandeau, Petroleum Institute Dr. Khaled Assaleh, American University of Sharjah Dr. Maamar Bettayeb, University of Sharjah

Conference General Chair Dr. Arif Al-Hammadi, Khalifa University

Conference Executive Chair Dr. Mohammed Al-Mualla, Khalifa University

Organizing Committee Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri, Khalifa University (Chair) Dr. Nagi Wakim, UAE University Dr. Chet Jablonski, Zayed University Dr. Mohamed Sassi, Masdar Instutute Dr. Youssef Abdel Magid, Petroleum Institute Dr. Khaled Assaleh, American University of Sharjah Dr. Taleb H AlTel, University of Sharjah

Students Organizing Sub-Committee Fatima Al Qayedi, Khalifa University Omar Assad, Masdar Institute Noura Helal Alnuaimi, UAE University Rakhee KR, University of Sharjah Ahmed Towaiq, American University of Sharjah Abdelaziz Al Zaabi, Khalifa University Azza Al Bakr, Masdar Institute Dana AlShami, Petroleum Institute Obaid Alhmoudi, Petroleum Institute Mohamed Badreldin, American University of Sharjah Abdul Rahman Said, UAE University Hiba Jadallah, University of Sharjah

13 Technical Program Committee Dr. Mohamad Al-Gamal, University of Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri, Khalifa Sharjah University (Chair) Dr. Omar Al-Jarrah, Khalifa University Dr. Ashraf Al-Khateeb, Khalifa University Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri, Khalifa Dr. Labeeb Bsoul, Khalifa University University Dr. Toufic Mezher, Masdar Institute Dr. Hasan Al‐Nashash, American Dr. Abeer Al Najjar, American University University of Sharjah of Sharjah Dr. Anas Alazzam, Khalifa University Dr. James Griffin, American University of Dr. Lutfi Albasha, American University of Sharjah Sharjah Dr. Akram Alfantazi, Petroleum Institute Clinical, Pre-Clinical, Health & Life Sci.s Dr. Khalid Alhammadi, Petroleum Institute Dr. M. Ljubisavljevic, UAE University Dr. Mohammad Alhawari, Khalifa Dr. Jens Schmidt, Masdar Institute University Engineering, IT & Physical Sciences Dr. Emad Alhseinat, Khalifa University Dr. Mohamed Ali, Masdar Institute Dr. Andrzej S. Sluzek, Khalifa University Dr. Ibraheem Almansouri, Masdar Dr. Abdel Hamid Mourad, UAE University Institute Dr. Tariq Shamim, Masdar Institute Dr. Fahad Almaskari, Petroleum Institute Dr. Ali Almansoori, Petroleum Institute Dr. Khawla Alnajjar, University of Sharjah Dr. Huw Griffiths, Petroleum Institute Dr. Mohammad Alshudeifat, Khalifa Dr. Imad Barsoum, Petroleum Institute Universiy Dr. Mohammad El-Tarhuni, AUS Dr. Heungjo An, Khalifa University Dr. Zeyar Aung, Masdar Institute Technical Program Committee Dr. Joonsang Baek, Khalifa University Dr. Shadi Balawi, Khalifa University Members and Reviewers Dr. Fawzi Banat, Petroleum Institute Dr. Hamid Abderrahmane, Masdar Dr. Ezedin Barka, UAE University Institute Dr. Imad Barsoum, Petroleum Institute Dr. Farid Abed, American University of Dr. Philip Beely, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Abdul Beig, Petroleum Institute Dr. Maguy Abi Jaoude, Khalifa University Dr. Abdallah Sofiane Berrouk, Petroleum Dr. Najah Abu Ali, UAE University Institute Dr. Eiyad Abu-Nada, Khalifa University Dr. Labeeb Bsoul, Khalifa University Dr. Mohammad Abu-Zahra, Masdar Dr. Young-Ji Byon, Khalifa University Institute Dr. Vincent Chan, Khalifa University Dr. Yacine Addad, Khalifa University Dr. Rachid Chebbi, American University of Dr. Jamal Ahmad, Petroleum Institute Sharjah Dr. Rana Ahmed, American University of Dr. Chung-Suk Cho, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Rezaul Chowdhury, UAE University Dr. Mohamed Al Hosani, Masdar Institute Dr. Tariq Darabseh, UAE University Dr. Abeer Al Najjar, American University Dr. Jorge Dias, Khalifa University of Sharjah Dr. Haris Doumanidis, Khalifa University Dr. Khalid Al- Ali, Masdar Institute Dr. Tarek El Fouly, Khalifa University Dr. Fatme Al-Anouti, Zayed University Dr. Rafat El-Awady, University of Sharjah

14 Dr. Ayman El-Hag, American University of Dr. Maaike Kroon, Petroleum Institute Sharjah Dr. Dimitrios Kyritsis, Khalifa University Dr. Bashar El-Khasawneh, Khalifa Dr. Rita L Sousa, Masdar Institute University Dr. Abderrahmane Lakas, UAE University Dr. Reyad El-Khazali, Khalifa University Dr. Taha Landolsi, American University of Dr. Nayla El-Kork, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Mohamed El-Tarhuni, American Dr. Sung Lee, Khalifa University University of Sharjah Dr. Panos Liatsis, Petroleum Institute Dr. Ibrahim Elfadel, Masdar Institute Dr. Milos Ljubisavljevic, United Arab Dr. Ehab F. El-Saadanye, Petroleum Emirates University Institute Dr. Maher Maalouf, Khalifa University Dr. John Gammack, Zayed University Dr. Soliman Mahmoud, University of Dr. Dongming Gan, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Deborah Gater, Khalifa University Dr. Tufail Malik, Khalifa University Dr. Amjad Gawanmeh, Khalifa University Dr. Farhi Marir, Zayed University Dr. Nayef Ghasem, UAE University Dr. Tim McGloughlin, Khalifa University Dr. Chaouki Ghenai, University of Sharjah Dr. Mahmoud Meribout, Petroleum Dr. Afshin Goharzadeh, Petroleum Institute Institute Dr. Toufic Mezher, Masdar Institute Dr. Dimitrios Goussis, Khalifa University Dr. Sadiq Midraj, Zayed University Dr. James Griffin, American University of Dr. Hasan Mir, American University of Sharjah Sharjah Dr. Ebru Gunister, Petroleum Institute Dr. Rabeb Mizouni, Khalifa University Dr. Abhijeet Gupta, Petroleum Institute Dr. Sharmarke Mohamed, Khalifa Dr. Maha Habib, Khalifa University University Dr. Hakim Hacid, Zayed University Dr. Sami Muhaidat, Khalifa University Dr. Leontios Hadjileontiadis, Khalifa Dr. Shayok Mukhopadhyay, American University University of Sharjah Dr. Mohamed Hamouda, UAE University Dr. Bashair Mussa, University of Sharjah Dr. Shadi Hasan, Masdar Institute Dr. Enas Nashef, Masdar Institute Dr. Mohammad Hayajneh, UAE University Dr. Hany Omar, University of Sharjah Dr. Andreas Henschel, Masdar Institute Dr. Hadi Otrok, Khalifa University Dr. Dirar Homouz, Khalifa University Dr. Rafael Pizarro, American University of Dr. Youssef Iraqi, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Leila Ismail, UAE University Dr. Kyriaki Polychronopoulou, Khalifa Dr. Chet Jablonski, Zayed University University Dr. Mohammad Jaradat, American Dr. Dang Viet Quang, Masdar Institute University of Sharjah Dr. Mohd Rezeq, Khalifa University Dr. Raja Jayaraman, Khalifa University Dr. Irfan Saadat, Masdar Institute Dr. Kursat Kara, Khalifa University Dr. Rana Sabouni, American University of Dr. Georgios Karanikolos, Petroleum Sharjah Institute Dr. Huwida Said, Zayed University Dr. Vinod Khadkikar, Masdar Institute Dr. Khaled Salah, Khalifa University Dr. Kamran Khan, Khalifa University Dr. Mohamed Sassi, Masdar Institute Dr. Shawqi Kharbash, United Arab Dr. Andreas Schiffer, Khalifa University Emirates University Dr. Mohamed Selim, UAE University Dr. Nelson King, Khalifa University

15 Dr. Mohamed Adel Serhani, UAE Dr. Usman Tariq, American University of University Sharjah Dr. Kumar Shanmugam, Masdar Institute Dr. Zouheir Trabelsi, UAE University Dr. Abdulhadi Shoufan, Khalifa University Dr. Rehan Umer, Khalifa University Dr. Shakti Singh, Khalifa University Dr. Lourdes Vega, Petroleum Institute Dr. Banu Sizirici Yildiz, Khalifa University Dr. Wei Lee Woon, Masdar Institute Dr. Andrzej Sluzek, Khalifa University Dr. Chan Yeob Yeun, Khalifa University Dr. Chandrasekar Srinivasakannan, Dr. Bashar Zahawi, Khalifa University Petroleum Institute Dr. Wael Zaki, Khalifa University Dr. Thomas Steuber, Petroleum Institute Dr. TieJun Zhang, Masdar Institute Dr. Abd-Elhamid Taha, Alfaisal University Dr. Lianxi Zheng, Khalifa University Dr. Kamal Taha, Khalifa University Dr. Youssef Zurigat, American University of Dr. Fatma Taher, Khalifa University Sharjah Dr. Hanifa Taher, Masdar Institute

16 Organizer

Khalifa University

President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in his capacity as Ruler of Abu Dhabi, has issued a decree on 20 February 2017, which officially merges Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology and The Petroleum Institute Khalifainto a single, University world - ofclass Science, university. Technology The new university and Research established is an under independent, this law will non go under-profit, coeducationalthe name: Khalifa institution University inaugurated of Science inand 2007 Technology. as part of an Abu Dhabi Government initiative.

In 2016 Khalifa University was named number one in the UAE according to Times Higher Education and QS World Rankings, it is also one of the top universities in the emerging world and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) by Times Higher Education (THE), placing 49th out of 300 institutions worldwide ranked in the THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2017, and coming in first in the Arab World ahead of competing institutions. The institution continues to be the youngest institution in the world to be named one of the top 100 universities under the age of 50 by QS, moving up into the top 60 position on the list. Khalifa University is dedicated to the advancement of learning through teaching and research and to the discovery and application of knowledge. It endeavors to be an internationally recognized research university, with a world class reputation for interdisciplinary teaching and research and a tradition of partnering with leading academic institutions from around the world. The University is modeled around the American system of higher education and is actively developing an international network of partners, faculty members, and research programs to advance regionally relevant research and innovation in the UAE and the region at large. The Emirate of Abu Dhabi has embarked upon a bold vision to develop a vibrant knowledge economy. With a strong emphasis on science, technology and innovation, Khalifa University aligns its academic offerings, research programs and mission very closely with that economic transformation. The University focuses its efforts around specific strategic sectors of the UAE economy, such as information and communication technology (ICT), aerospace, transport and logistics, energy and the environment, healthcare, and security. Currently, Khalifa University enrolls over 1800 students studying in several specialized engineering programs, all of which have been accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education, UAE. The University currently provides the following undergraduate programs:  B.Sc. Aerospace Engineering  B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering  B.Sc. Biomedical Engineering  B.Sc. Industrial and Systems Engineering  B.Sc. Communications Engineering  B.Sc. Civil Engineering  B.Sc. Computer Engineering  B.Sc. Chemical Engineering  B.Sc. Electrical and Electronic  B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Engineering Statistics

At the graduate level, the University offers a variety of highly specialized programs. These programs currently include:  M.A. in International and Civil Security  Ph.D. in Engineering (with the option to  M.Sc. in Information Security specialize in Electrical and Computer,  M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering Mechanical, Aerospace, Nuclear,  M.Sc. by Research in Engineering Biomedical, or Robotics Engineering)  M.Sc. in Systems and Engineering Management Khalifa University currently enjoys strong relationships with over 20 national and international partners including industry leaders, multinational entities, government agencies, universities and other institutions. By partnering with these entities, the University seeks to emphasize its commitment to research and development, as well as providing its students and faculty the opportunity to solve applied problems and gain real world experience.

The University also runs active research centers. The sponsored activities include Emirates Advanced Network for Research and Education (Ankabut). Khalifa University is taking a leading role in establishing the UAE’s National Research and Education Network. Ankabut interconnects academic and research institutions in the UAE and offers next-generation connectivity solutions to other networks around the world. Another initiative is Etisalat-BT Innovation Center (EBTIC), which is a jointly owned venture between Etisalat, British Telecom and Khalifa University and which is housed on the university’s campus. The center is created to enable innovation in the UAE by conducting research and development in next generation networks with innovative applications and services of direct relevance in the region. Other areas of research include ICT, visual signal analysis and processing, aerospace, semiconductors, robotics, biomedical, nuclear and information security. Khalifa University is dedicated to providing the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the UAE, the region and the world with highly qualified engineers, technologists and scientists, capable of making major contributions to the UAE as leaders and innovators of industry and society.

Contacts: Khalifa University, P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, UAE T: +9712-4018000, F: +9712-4472442 www.kustar.ac.ae

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at Khalifa University campus in Abu Dhabi. For more information about Khalifa University and the new extension, where the conference opening ceremony and session will be held, please visit the University websites:

http://www.kustar.ac.ae/ http://www.kustar.ac.ae/pages/campus-expansion

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Keynotes

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Keynote 1: Innovation in the UAE

Dr. Arif Sultan Al-Hammadi Executive Vice President, Khalifa University

Date and Time: Monday, 20 March 2017, 9:30 – 10:15

Room: Auditorium, KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

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Keynote 2: Robotics in Our Daily Lives

Dr. Marcelo H. Ang, Jr. National University of Singapore

Date and Time: Monday, 20 March 2017, 10:30 – 11:15

Room: Auditorium, KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Abstract Robotics science and technology have evolved from the seminal applications in industrial robotics for manufacturing to today’s varied applications in service, health care, education, entertainment and other industries including construction, mining and agriculture. One common theme in these emerging applications is the human-centered nature, where robotic systems surround humans, aiding and working with us to enrich and enhance the quality of our lives. The boundaries of what defines a robotic system continue to expand and at the same time become fuzzier as robotic systems become part of our everyday lives, signaling the start of a robotics revolution that would have more impact than the industrial and IT revolutions. This talk reviews the state-of-the-art developments in fundamental capabilities as well as emerging applications. This talk will then conclude with the challenges in science and technology to further accelerate the robotics revolution.

About the Presenter Dr. Marcelo H. Ang, Jr. received his BSc and MSc degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the De La Salle University in the Philippines and University of Hawaii, USA in 1981 and 1985, respectively, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rochester, New York in 1988 where he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1989, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National University of Singapore where he is currently an Associate Professor and Acting Director of the Advanced Robotics Center. His research interests span the areas of robotics, mechatronics, autonomous systems, and applications of intelligent systems. He teaches robotics; creativity and innovation; applied electronics and instrumentation; computing; design and related areas. In addition to academic and research activities. He is also actively involved in the Singapore Robotic Games as its founding chairman, and the World Robot Olympiad as member of its Advisory Council.

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Keynote 3: Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) 2020 Overview

Engr. Sara Al-Amiri Chair, Emirates Scientists Council. Science Lead, Emirates Mars Mission (Hope Mission) and Director, Space Science Department

Date and Time: Tuesday, 21 March 2017, 9:00 – 9:45

Room: Auditorium, KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Abstract The UAE has entered the space exploration race with the announcement of Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first Emirati mission to another planet, in 2014. Through this mission, UAE is to send an unmanned probe, called Hope probe, to be launched in summer 2020 and reach Mars by 2021 to coincide with UAE’s 50th anniversary. The mission should be unique, and should aim for novel and significant discoveries that contributed to the ongoing work of the global space science community. The mission is designed to answer the following three science questions: - How does the Martian lower atmosphere respond globally, diurnally, and seasonally to solar forcing? - How do conditions throughout the Martian atmosphere affect rates of atmospheric escape? - How does the Martian exosphere behave temporally and spatially?

About the Presenter Sarah has been appointed in 2016 as the Chairwoman of the newly established Emirates Scientists Council, with the objective to further develop and strengthen the Science and Technology sectors in the UAE. Sarah Amiri is currently the Deputy Project Manager and Science Lead of the Emirates Mars Mission (Hope) at the Mohamed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC). Her current task is to enable the research environment for the first generation of UAE Planetary Scientists. In 2015 Sarah was selected as one of 50 young scientists by the World Economic Forum for her contribution to the development efforts in the fields of Science, Technology and Engineering. Sarah has worked in MBRSC since 2009 on various roles including a software engineer and Head of Research and Development.

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Conference Program

24 UAE Graduate Students Research Conference 2017 Program

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Monday, March 20

Monday, March 20, 08:00 ­ 09:00

Registration (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 09:00 ­ 09:30

Opening Ceremony

Room: Auditorium­KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 09:30 ­ 10:15

Keynote 1: Innovation in the UAE

Dr. Arif Al­Hammadi, Executive VP Khalifa University

Room: Auditorium­KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 10:15 ­ 10:30

M­CB1: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 10:30 ­ 11:15

Keynote 2: Robotics in Our Daily Lives

Prof. Marcelo H. Ang, National University of Singapore

Room: Auditorium­KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 11:15 ­ 11:30

M­CB2: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

26 Monday, March 20, 11:30 ­ 12:50

M­SA1: Chemistry & Chemical Engineering

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Vincent Chan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Maguy Abi Jaoude (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of R11 Hydrate Slurry Flow in a Pipeline Peng Jiang and Abdallah Sofiane Berrouk (the Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study shows a computation fluid dynamics simulation of Freon R11 hydrate slurry flow in a three­ dimensional pipeline using Eulerian­Eulerian solid­liquid multiphase model in ANSYS Fluent 14.0. A user defined function (UDF) of solid shear viscosity derived from the correlations of experimental data was written and integrated into Fluent. The numerical results of pressure gradients at different inlet velocity and different hydrate volume fractions were compared with the experimental evidences and good agreements were reached. After the model validation, the distributions of hydrate velocity magnitude and hydrate volume fraction together with the hydrate velocity vector were investigated and visibly shown through six different cross­sections of the pipeline. Moreover, the effects of hydrate velocity and hydrate volume fractions on flow characteristics were explored.

11:50 Post combustion carbon capture with amine based deep eutectic solvents (DESs) Idowu Adeyemi (Masdar Institute & Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammad Abu­Zahra and Enas Muen Nashef (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study seeks to determine the solubility of carbon dioxide in amine based deep eutectic solvents (DESs). The CO2 absorption was conducted with a solvent screening set­up (SSS) and the CO2 loading was measured with a total organic carbon (TOC) analyzer. The solubility experiments were performed based on the conditions of the absorber in the post­combustion capture process (PCO2 = 15kPa and T = 40oC). Results revealed that amine­based DESs have absorption capacity that is higher than aqueous amines. The solubility of CO2 was found to increase as the molar ratio of the amine in the DES increased.

12:10 Isolation and characterization of novel Tetraselmis striata strain AAH001 from Abu Dhabi's desert Ahmed Alharthi and Hector Hernandez (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Deserts are among the most extreme environments that microalgae species thrive in, helping maintain the ecological balance of such ecosystems. Microalgae desert strains have adapted to temperature variability, salinity, nutrients scarcity, and solar radiation. These mechanisms are significant to Abu Dhabi's environment as microalgae can provide solutions to water, food, and energy security challenges. One such strain has been isolated from a small water pond in Al Wathbah desert in Abu Dhabi. This novel strain, named AAH001, was genetically characterized as a strain of Tetraselmis striata by sequencing of its Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) regions. Strain AAH001 exhibits growth in salinities ranging from 5ppt up to 300ppt, with the optimum growth at 75ppt. This strain exhibited salinity specific growth optima and was shown to tolerate growth temperatures of up to 40 °C. Strain AAH001 was able to grow using air supplemented with up to 12% CO2 content.

12:30 Study of a novel cylindrical flow electrodes capacitive deionization process HsinTan HO (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) A cylindrical flow­electrode capacitive deionization(FCDI) module with continuous circulating of flow­electrodes was designed. The flow­electrodes used in this study consisted of activated carbon(AC) particles that were suspended in deionized water. It was found that the FCDI that was operated with both flow­electrodes streams were combined showed better salt­removal efficiencies than the both flow­electrodes streams were not combined. This was due to the charges were neutralized in the combined mode, ions were desorbed and the flow­electrodes were automatically regenerated when both steams were mixed. Hence, this design eliminated the energy intensive regeneration step of the conventional­CDI operational approach. The salt adsorption process by AC particles can be described by a physical adsorption process, which are affirmed by the kinetic­model. These experimental results confirmed the feasibility of using a novel cylindrical flow capacitive deionization module to remove salt ions from stream and paved the ways for scale up applications in water purification.

M­SB1: Energy & Fuels

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chair: Wael Zaki (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Thermoeconomic Analysis of Densely­Packed Concentrated Photovoltaic Thermal (CPVT) Solar Collectors in Thermally in­Series and in­Parallel Receiver Configurations Omar Sharaf (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) A concentrated photovoltaic thermal (CPVT) solar collector maximizes utilization of the solar input by simultaneously generating electrical and thermal outputs. The concept of a CPVT attempts to address three main barriers to solar technologies; namely, low energy density, high cost, and low efficiencies. In the present study, two high­concentration densely­packed CPVT configurations are optically and thermodynamically designed and evaluated, incorporating exergoeconomic and environmental assessments. The designs are composed of parabolic dish concentrators, multi­ 27 junction photovoltaic cells, segmented thermoelectric generators with interconnectors, and finned minichannel heat extractors. In configuration I, the receiver assembly components are connected thermally in­series whereas in configuration II they are connected thermally in­parallel. It is found that the thermally in­series configuration offers an average annual exergy efficiency of 29.12% compared to 19.28% for the thermally in­parallel configuration. Both configurations offer comparable average annual energy efficiencies with a slight environmental and exergoeconomic advantage to the thermally in­parallel configuration.

11:50 Kinetic Analysis of Catalytic Coal Gasification Shahid Rabbani (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Catalytic coal gasification process is a useful technology used in the plants that use coal, especially the ones that use SNG (Substitute Natural Gas) and IGFC (Integrated Gasification Fuel Cell). This process was developed back in 1978 but not much work has been done on computational thermodynamic analysis of catalytic coal gasification. The purpose of this study is to model the Catalytic coal gasification process in Aspen Plus and investigate the kinetic values of the process in presence of Potassium Carbonate as Catalyst. In order to reduce CO2 emission from the coal and increase the boiler efficiency using coal as fuel, we have also included analysis of drying characteristics of coal using Aspen Plus model of the catalytic converter process. After modelling and validating the results from available experimental results, exergy analysis of the whole process is also included in the project.

12:10 Valorisation of Biomass from Arid Regions­A case for Pyrolysis Prosper Dzidzienyo (MASDAR INSTITUTE, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The study sampled different biomass types common to arid regions that can be grown with saline water including halophytes like Salicornia bigelovii, cellulosic agricultural waste like date palms (Phoenix dactylifera), macroalgae Ulva lactuca and a microalgae Arthrospira platensis, food waste and composted waste sludge. Slow Pyrolysis was performed on all biomass types and the distribution of pyro­oil, char and gases from these biomasses are presented. Pyro­oil yields varied from 0.4% to 37% for different biomasses from 300 °C to 550 °C. Salicornia bigelovii straw gave the highest yield of pyro­oil at 34% at 450°C. The calorific values of the original biomasses, the pyro­oil and chars were also measured. Mass and energy balance analysis was used to compute the calorific values of the pyrolysis gases.

12:30 Maximization of output power of the final optical element in the CSPonD Demo prototype Miguel Diago, Peter Armstrong and Nicolas Calvet (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The CSPonD Demo prototype consists of a volumetric molten salt solar receiver that accepts concentrated solar radiation from a beam­down tower via a final optical element (FOE). This works researches the canting angles of the tower central reflectors that maximize the thermal output of the FOE. This value can vary over 20 % depending on the selection of the canting configuration. For a given FOE construction, the best canting configuration of the central reflectors depends on the reflectivity of the FOE facets. It is found that as the reflectivity decreases, the best canting are those which bring the aiming point of the central reflector lower on the axis of the FOE.

M­SC1: Material Science

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Rehan Umer (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Sharmarke Mohamed (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 SiC Based Radiative Cooling Structure Afra Alketbi, Aikifa Raza, Jin You Lu and TieJun Zhang (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Radiative cooling has attracted a lot of attention in the past few years due to its diverse potential applications such as in dry cooling of domestic building or even solar cells. The radiative cooling process utilizes the existence of a transparency window in Earth's atmosphere between 8 to 13 μm. Over the past few years many designs have emerged that make use of this fact and has a selective emittance that helps dissipate the absorbed heat and lower the surface temperature. In this work we introduce a novel yet simple design that enables the cooling process. The design is composed of a single layer of Silicon Carbide (SiC) with a Distributed Bragg's Reflector (DBR) that utilizes nano­porous SiO2 films on top. FDTD simulation of the proposed structure demonstrated the two main qualities for radiative cooling, high reflection in the visible range and high ultra broadband emission within the transparency window.

11:50 Electrospun WO3­NiWO4 Composite Nano Fibers as Active Electrocatalysts for Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Shaheen Anis, Boor Lalia and Ahmad O. Mostafa (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Raed Hashaikeh (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Nickel tungstate­ tungsten oxide composite fibers were synthesized through the electrospinning method using precursor salt solutions of nickel and tungsten. Composite fiber morphology and structure were studied using SEM and X­ray diffraction. The composite fibers were investigated for electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction in both acidic and alkaline media where they showed good electrocatalytic activity with respect to over potentials and Tafel slopes. The study showed that the NiWO4 compound, formed during the composite fabrication, was responsible for improving the electrocatalytic performance of the fibrous catalyst. Besides electrocatalysis, nickel­tungsten oxide fibers have immense potential in applications ranging from photo catalysis to gas sensing.

12:10 Effects of Gas Flow Rate on the Properties of Tin Oxide Thin Films Deposited by RF Sputtering Muntaser Al­Mansoori (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Sahar Al­Shaibani and Ahlam Al­Jaeedi (National Energy and Water Research Center (NEWRC), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jisung Lee and Daniel Choi (Masdar Institute of Science and

28 Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Falah Hasoon (National Energy and Water Research Center (NEWRC), United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Photovoltaic (PV) technology is one of the key answers for a better sustainable future. An important layer in the structure of common PV cells is the transparent conductive oxide (TCO). A widely applied TCO is tin oxide. The advantage of using tin oxide comes from its high stability, and it is inexpensive in terms of raw materials and processing techniques. We discuss our study of depositing thin­film tin oxide layer by utilizing magnetron RF­sputtering technique while varying the Ar inert gas flow rate and oxygen content. Preliminary results showed that sheet resistance values obtained for the tin oxide films spanned across four orders of magnitude in their as­deposited amorphous conditions, and transmittance values extending from 47 to 90% within the visible light spectrum.

12:30 The Effects of Ball Milling on Freestanding Sheets of MWCNT Electrodes for Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries Tawaddod Alkindi, Ibrahim H. S. Mustafa, Saif Almheiri and Zainab Karam (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Unique properties such as high porosity, large surface area, inducible wettability, high mechanical strength, and high chemical activity are excellent reasons to make MWCNTs an interesting area of research as Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRFBs) electrodes materials. In this experimental work, freestanding sheets of MWCNTs, known as buckypapers, were fabricated. A ball milling process was performed as a pretreatment to fabricate electrodes for VRFBs. The effects of various ball milling speeds on the electrodes performance was studied; Surface area, amount of de­bundling, and amount of defects increased as ball milling speeds increased, as proven by SEM Microscopy and Raman Spectroscopy. Electrochemical performance improved as ball milling speeds increased as evident by Voltammetry.

M­SD1: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Abdel­Hamid Ismail Mourad (Unietd Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Andreas Schiffer (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Fracture Performance of Cracks Emanating from Holes in PMMA Youssef Shaaban Matter (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Abdel­Hamid Ismail Mourad (Unietd Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Crack propagation emanating from holes in specimens made of PMMA is studied. Fracture tests on several specimens are conducted to examine their fracture performance under Mode­I and Mixed Mode (I and II) loading. Each specimen has central hole and initial symmetrical cracks of certain length and at specific angle. During testing, the load versus overhead displacement is determined. Results show that, after initiation, cracks will propagate almost along the surface perpendicular to the applied load. The maximum load needed for full specimen separation highly depends on the initial crack length and the angle at which the initial crack is created. The J­integral value increases with the angle for the same crack length and decreases with crack length for the same angle.

11:50 Application of Rotating Nonlinear Energy Sinks to Large­Scale Structure Adnan Saeed (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammad Alshudeifat (Khalifa Universiy, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Over the last decade, Nonlinear Energy Sinks (NESs) have experienced a significant development and gained rapid­ growing interest. One of the recent new types of NESs is the rotating NESs which has further been enhanced recently to incorporate an elastic arm and therefore another degree of freedom is added. This article presents the numerical simulations of attaching two rotating elastic NESs to the top and second top floors of a real life nine­story structure.

12:10 Experimental and numerical study of heat transfer in a circular duct with vortex generators insert Guangda Liang (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kharoua Nabil and Md Didarul Islam (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Current study presents an experimental work on the thermal augmentation and pressure penalty in a constant heat­ fluxed circular duct with vortex generators insert. The experiment was conducted in turbulent flow regime with a Reynolds number ranging from 6000 to 27000. The results suggested that by increasing the length of winglet, both heat transfer coefficient and friction factor will intensify. With lower pitch ratio, higher Nusselt number and friction factor are achieved. The maximum heat transfer efficiency is obtained for the length of 20 mm, pitch ratio of 1.6 and Reynolds number of 27000. However, the highest thermal enhancement factor of 1.59 is obtained for the length of 10 mm, pitch ratio of 4.8 and Reynolds number of 6000. The flow structure was also precisely portrayed.

12:30 Variable­Refrigerant­Flow Cooling­Systems Performance at Different Operation­ Pressures and Types­of­Refrigerants Roba Saab (Masdar Institute for Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper presents energy models of the variable refrigerant flow (VRF) technology. VRF is an advanced type of air conditioning systems proposed to be implemented in Masdar Eco­Villas in Abu Dhabi. VRF units manufactured by Daikin and LG companies were both modeled and compared using engineering equation solver (EES) software. The models done on EES were repeated for validation on IPSEpro software, and the results were similar within 4% error. Finally, different refrigerants were modeled and the results showed that refrigerant R­410a would be the second most efficient refrigerant for such systems. The model results have been validated with the Daikin system installed in Dubai.

29 M­SE1: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Irfan Saadat (Faculty ­ Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Shakti Singh (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Novel Hafnium Oxide Memristor Device: switching behaviour and size effect Heba Abunahla, Baker Mohammad, Maguy Abi Jaoude and Mahmoud Al­Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Unipolar RRAM devices are of high interest due to their high resistance ratio and simple selector circuit. In this paper, we report on a measurements from nano­thick memristor featuring a novel Pd/Hf/HfO2/Pd stack. The fabricated device exhibits a unipolar switching behavior, due to the asymmetric device structure and the existence of the Pd metal as a bottom electrode. The electrical characteristics of the memristor are studied for different device sizes that vary from 50 µm to 1000 µm. Although increasing the device size reduces the required switching voltage of the memristor, this reduction saturates at device size of 200 µm for the same stack thicknesses. The findings presented in this work highlight the impact of device geometry on its electrical performance and power, which provide guidance to the design tradeoffs (size, power, resistance ratio) and fabrication process of memristor devices.

11:50 A Study of the Interface Quality of Ge­Based MOS Capacitors using RF Plasma Nitration Ghada Dushaaq (UAE, Abu Dhabi & Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mahmoud Rasras (Masdar Institute of Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ammar Nayfeh (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) in this paper, nitration of germanium surface using a mixture of N2O, NH3 and N2 is performed using RF­PECVD reactor. The electrical characteristics of Al/HfO2/GeON/p­Ge capacitors are investigated. Results show that the hysteresis of metal­oxide­semiconductor (MOS) capacitors with nitration­based passivation step is reduced to ~150 mV, compared with ~400mV of the untreated sample. The suppression of hysteresis is attributed to the reduction of electron traps and enhancement of dielectric/Ge interface quality. The improved interface quality of plasma­based nitration of Ge surface is a promising technique for high performance Ge MOSFET fabrication

12:10 Design and Simulation of a 1200 V short­channel 4H­SiC DMOSFET Aamenah Siddiqui and Shakti Singh (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, the design and simulation of a short­channel (0.5 μm) 4H­SiC power DMOSFET is presented. The design aspects are associated with trade­offs that are discussed in the paper. The structure is optimized for high blocking voltage of up to 1200 V at 27 °C, and it exhibits off­state leakage currents of <10­20 A in the forward state. Even though high blocking voltages are possible in DMOSFETs, they still suffer from low current densities due to low channel mobility at the surface. To address this issue, the use of alternate dielectrics is suggested.

12:30 A Linear Digital Programmable CMOS Balanced Output Transconductor Mohamed Elamien and Soliman Mahmoud (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, a digital programmable balanced OTA is proposed. The OTA employs three linearization techniques which are the source degeneration, double differential pair technique and the adaptive biasing. The digital programmability is achieved by using two current division networks (CDNs). The third­order harmonic distortion (HD3) remains below ­60 dB for 0.6 V input voltage at 1.2 V supply voltage. The proposed OTA performance is validated by SPICE simulation using TSMC 90 nm technology.

M­SF1: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Leontios J. Hadjileontiadis (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE) & Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), Zeyar Aung (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Visual Target Tracking Under Varying Illumination Conditions Buti Al Delail (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Harish Bhaskar (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jamal Zemerly (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammed Al­Mualla (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Visual targets tracking under varying illuminations is a challenging problem, mainly when the illumination varies across different regions of the target. This paper surveys the current state­of­the­art in visual target tracking under varying illumination conditions, with the main focus on particle filter based trackers. Being one of the main topics in computer vision, much research has contributed to visual target tracking in the past decade. In this context, particle filter based approaches have captured a fair amount of attention. This is because it effectively deals with solving non­ linear and non­gaussian probability distribution, as well as its ability to recover from occlusions, thus making it suitable for many tracking problems. However, current particle filtering methods do not perform well when the target appearance changes significantly. By allowing the particle filter to deal with large variations in pose, shape, and illumination, the risk of losing the tracked target is increased.

30 11:50 Multiple Proposals for Sign Language Recognition Mohamed Hassan, Khaled Assaleh and Tamer Shanableh (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Sign language recognition (SLR) as whole is considered as relatively new area, and Arabic SLR (ArSLR) specifically is quite new as it did not receive much of attention until recent years. This work present a comprehensive comparison between three different classification techniques for continuous ArSLR, namely our Modified k­nearest neighbor(KNN) and two hidden Markov models (HMM) toolkits. In addition, Two datasets are introduced and will be available for the research community. Both datasets composed of the same 40 Arabic sentences but have been collected using two different acquisition technologies; Polhemus G4 motion trackers and DG5­VHand data gloves . We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each technology. Each dataset have been classified using each of the the aforementioned classification techniques. This paper and to the best of our knowledge propose the first continuous ArSLR using motion tracker.

12:10 Dynamic Textures Based Target Detection for PTZ Cameras M. Sami Zitouni (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Harish Bhaskar (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammed Al­ Mualla (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, a temporally­iterative based GMM of DT model for target detection using a moving PTZ camera, is proposed. Camera movement in a PTZ sensor causes motion­based target detection techniques to fail for the periods affected by the scene change, where the whole scene is considered a representation of the target motion. During camera motion, conventional background models remain invalid until the time that the model has adapted and updated its parameters to the newly perceived scene. The proposed model is based on an iterative modeling of spatio­ temporal patches representing the visual scene using a Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) of dynamic textures (DT). The application of the GMM­of­DT, during the initial iteration is performed to temporally segment the video into clips separating global from local motion. Further, parameters of the GMM­of­DT model are estimated for each temporal segment and in subsequent iterations applied adaptively to generate the foreground mask.

12:30 Study on LBP Variants over Mesh Manifold Claudio Tortorici and Naoufel Werghi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Stefano Berretti (University of Florence, Italy) Local Binary Pattern is a successful descriptor that showed high performances in 2D and depth images. In this paper the possibility to replicate 2D LBP variants on a real 3D environment is proposed. Extending LBP variants to mesh manifolds permit to take the advantage of their descriptive power applied on a real 3D support, inheriting its strengths. In particular six variants will be presented and explained, analysing the binary pattern generated. Such study allow to optimize the descriptor size and discriminative accuracy.

M­SG1: Health and Life Sciences

Room: 203007 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Fatme Al­Anouti (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Sung Lee (Biomedical Engineering, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Relationship between hormonal status, epigenetic markers and response of breast cancer cells to chemotherapy Wafaa Ramadan, SH, Ekram Saleh, Varsha Menon and Rafat El­Awady (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is more aggressive and poorer prognosis compared to other breast cancer subtypes. So far there are no potential targeted therapy drugs for TNBC patients. Our aim is to investigate the effect of epigenetic modifiers (SAHA and 5­aza­dc) on the expression of ERα and HER2/ERBB2 and on the response of different breast cancer cell lines to Tamoxifen. Our results show differential expression of epigenetic markers in MCF7, SkBr3, BT­549 and MDA­MB­231 cells. Therefore, treatment with epigenetic modifiers showed different effects on the expression level of ERα and HER2/ERBB2 in the four cell lines. In addition, the sensitivity of these four cell lines to Tamoxifen upon combination with epigenetic modifiers was increased. Moreover, SAHA and 5­aza­dc have a role in inducing apoptosis through decreasing the expression of c­MYC, non­cleaved Bid and Bcl­xl while increasing the expression of p53. The results of the present study indicate that modification of epigenetic status of breast cancer cells specially the triple negative ones enhances their response to hormonal therapy through upregulation of ERα and induction of apoptosis.

11:50 The Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Desbuquois Dysplasia type II Nesreen Al Jezawi (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Lihadh Al­Gazali and Bassam Ali (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Desbuquois syndrome is a rare heterogeneous skeletal dysplasia characterized by short­limbed dwarfism, dysmorphic facial features and severe joint laxity. Two types have been recognized based on the presence of distinctive carpal and phalangeal features. Mutations in CANT1 gene have been found to be responsible for type I and lately, for Kim type. In addition, a number of Desbuquois dysplasia type II patients have been attributed to mutations in xylosyltransferase1, encoded by the XYLT1 gene, an enzyme essential for the biosynthesis of proteoglycans. We report here a patient with Desbuquois dysplasia II with a novel homozygous duplication of a single nucleotide in XYLT1 gene (c.2169dupA). The variant is predicted to result in a frame­shift and stop codon (p.Val724Serfs*10) within the xylosyltransferase catalytic domain. Confocal analysis of the current and the previously reported missense mutations (c.1441C>T, p.Arg481Trp and c.1792C>T, p.Arg598Cys), revealed aberrant subcellular localization of the mutant proteins, suggesting endoplasmic reticulum retention.

12:10 The Role of ShcD and Ret interaction in neuroblastoma survival and migration Zeanap Mohamed (University Of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

31 Preliminary screening data showed that ShcD adaptor protein associates with the proto­oncogene Ret receptor tyrosine kinase. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the molecular interaction between ShcD and Ret in human neuroblastoma and studying the functional impact of this interaction. We were able to show that ShcD immunoprecipitated with Ret from SK­N­AS neuroblastoma cells lysate upon GDNF treatment. This result was validated by ShcD­Ret co­localization via employing fluorescence microscope. ShcD­Ret association was shown to have unexpectedly negative impact on various downstream signaling pathways such as AKT, PKC and ERK pathways. Interestingly, ShcD­Ret association reduced cell viability and migration in SK­N­AS cell line. However, ShcD was shown previously to trigger melanoma cell migration and tumorigenesis; our data showed an opposite role for ShcD in neuroblastoma SK­N­AS cells via its association with Ret. Conclusively, ShcD acts as a switch molecule in bringing a contrast biological responses, which needs further determination.

12:30 Doxorubicin­Encapsulated, Estrone­Appended Liposomes Triggered by Ultrasound for the Treatment of Breast Cancer Pierre Kawak, Vinod Paul, Paul Kawak, Rita Kassermally, Fatme Lahib, Rute Vitor and Mohammad Al­Sayah (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ghaleb Husseini (AUS, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Doxorubicin, like most chemotherapeutic drugs, causes unwanted side effects by interacting with healthy cells. To avoid this and to increase drug delivery efficiency, smart Drug Delivery Systems (DDS) are used. The DDS studied incorporated estrone ligands on its liposomal surface to interact with breast cancer cells and was triggered to release the drug with focused ultrasound. The release properties, sizes and stability of the DDS were studied. The liposome was characterized as a large unilamellar vesicle. The release rate upon insonation increased with increasing power density for constant frequency. Ultrasound is a promising factor for its biocompatibility and noninvasive nature.

M­SH1: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Room: 203009 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Sadiq Midraj (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Maha Habib (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Constructive Alignment Challenges Moza Salim Al Naimi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Academic sector is in needs of a process that provides a framework for adjusting teaching and assessment to address the achievement of class, department and university outcomes (Biggs, 2014), but the challenges for such a process are unstudied empirically. Should Constructive Alignment (CA) become the standard alignment method in our modern education system? What are causes and consequences (challenges) of such a move, if it is considered? In specific, this study tests wither finance and attendant staff workloads, teacher resistance to change, promotions base on research productivity rather than teaching quality and leadership at all departmental, faculty and institutional levels are the keys challenges for Constructive Alignment implementation. This study will identify for academic sector which of the above factors are representing a real challenges to CA implementation in education system.

11:50 Is the Upper Half of Linguistic Stimuli Always More Informative than the Lower? Evidence from English and Arabic Maryam AlJassmi (Zayed University & Psychology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Previous studies have reported that when presenting just the upper or lower halves of words, the upper half is more informative than the lower half in a range of different languages. However, despite the widespread usage of Arabic, the informativeness of the upper and lower halves of Arabic words have never been reported. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to investigate the informativeness of the upper and lower halves of Arabic words, nonwords and single letters. Arabic­English bilinguals participated in a two­alternative forced choice procedure in which Arabic and English words, nonwords and single letters were displayed in three different formats (complete, upper half, lower half). Results revealed an upper advantage for all English stimuli but a lower advantage for all Arabic stimuli. The magnitude of this upper­lower difference was greatest for words in both languages indicating that these effects reflect components specific to word recognition.

12:10 investigating cycle two English language teachers' perceptions about reading strategies and limitation factors hindering the use of strategies Mona Binothman and Sadiq Ismail (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study investigated the perceptions of 211 English teachers about the use of various reading strategies and the possible factors that may limit the applications of those strategies in grades 6­9 in UAE's cycle 2 schools. The study also examined if there is any statistically significant difference between English non­native and native teachers' views of the use of reading strategies and the factors that may hinder the use of such strategies in their classes. Generally, the results reveal that the English teachers tend to use various reading strategies in their classes (M =4.08) although they highlighted some factors that may limit the applications of those strategies (M=3.94). The results also show that there are some statistically significant differences between native and non­native English teachers regarding the use of reading strategies in their classes and the factors that may limit the applications of such strategies.

12:30 Extensive Reading and UAE High Schoolers' Needs Assessment Mona Aljanahi (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In the past few decades Arab educators and literates have shown concern claiming that Arabs have abandoned reading. Another level of perplexity is added when the reading is proposed to take place in a second language— English. Studies indicate that in order for students to learn to read they have to do just that— read. Much research has shown that Extensive Reading is beneficial for second language learning. As such, this study sought to answer the question of how best to incorporate extensive reading programs in English classrooms in the UAE by examining it from a needs assessment perspective of the learners' themselves—an indispensable first step in implementing and planning educational programs. Questionnaires were used as the core mode of data collection from female and male public high school students in the UAE. Data gathered from the participants were analyzed following patterns of Borich's (1980) needs assessment model. 32 Monday, March 20, 12:50 ­ 14:00

M­L: Lunch Break (KU New Extension ­ Student Hubb (Ground Floor))

Monday, March 20, 14:00 ­ 15:40

M­SA2: Chemistry & Chemical Engineering

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Vincent Chan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Kyriaki Polychronopoulou (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Prediction of foaming height and surface tension of lean MDEA solutions in continuous foam fractionation column Mohammad Keewan (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Fawzi Banat and Emad Alhseinat (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Amine foaming is a common problem in gas sweetening unit. Prediction of foaming behavior will help in unraveling the operational challenges faced by the gas industry. This study was carried out with the aim of predicting the foam height and surface tension of lean MDEA solutions using continuous foam fractionation technique. The effect of Bis (2­ Hydroxyethyl) Cocoalkylamine (BHCL, a corrosion inhibitor) as a model foam creators on foaming tendency was explored. The obtained experimental results were used to determine the empirical parameters k and n of the power law relation previously derived for high viscous fluid (i.e. ∏2=K∏1^n). The prediction model gave a perfect agreement with the experimentally observed results (<6% deviation). The foam height model helped in envisaging the surface tension profile and in turn the separation performance of foam creators. The foam height was observed to increase with increasing the superficial gas velocity and BHCL concentration.

14:20 Radiation­free superhydrophilic and antifogging properties of e­beam evaporated TiO2 films on glass Corrado Garlisi and Giovanni Palmisano (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this work, we show the unique wettability properties of deposited by e­beam evaporation on glass treated at 500 °C. The deposited materials exhibited compact nonporous structures and their non­UV activated superwetting behavior was characterized, emphasizing the better performance compared to the bare glass substrate to a commercial self­ cleaning glass (Pilkington Activ™) even in terms of antifogging optical properties. The results demonstrate how the superhydrophilic character arises from the used deposition technique inducing a large amount of oxygen vacancies further boosted by the annealing treatment, allowing the fabrication of a pioneering material in the area of multifunctional coatings. The photocatalytic activity of the film was also assessed by degradation of methanol, 2­ propanol and toluene under UV light in a gas phase reactor and the performance was found to be in most cases superior compared to Pilkington Activ™.

14:40 Synthesis and Characterization of Physical Activated Carbons from Local Date Seeds for CO2 Capture Adetola E. Ogungbenro, Dang Viet Quang, Khalid Al­ Ali and Mohammad Abu­Zahra (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The feasibility of capturing carbon dioxide using activated carbons produced from seeds of local date fruits in the United Arab Emirates is explored in this experimental study. There has been no published study on the potentials of date seeds synthesized activated carbon for carbon dioxide capture. Adsorption efficiency often relies on method of preparation and starting or source materials. The physical activation methods are reported, with evaluation of effects of temperature on the yield and adsorption capacities of prepared activated carbon. Sample characteristics such as surface area and porosity, and scanning electron microscopic pore images are also reported in this study. Optimal temperature for pyrolysis was 800°C, while activation temperature which had the highest CO2 adsorption capacity was 900°C with a loading of 141.14 mg adsorbed CO2/g activated carbon. Further research efforts should consider thermal capacities of the adsorbent and heats of regeneration compared to established solvent amines.

15:00 Membrane bioreactor­ desalination microbial fuel cell hybrid system Noora Mukhtar, Sameer Al­Asheh and Ahmed Aidan (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Clean and affordable provision of water and energy are essential for achieving sustainable development. Researchers are studying the possibilities for improved and new water treatment technologies as well as alternative renewable energies. Great investments are spent for the energy­intensive desalination plants in the Gulf region. Microbial desalination cell offers great promise of high salinity removal with zero energy input, and membrane bioreactors are of great reliability in treating domestic and industrial wastewater. The objective of this work is to introduce a hybrid system of membrane bioreactor and microbial desalination fuel cell for simultaneous wastewater treatment, seawater desalination and production of electricity. Synthetic wastewater, gulf seawater, potassium hexacyanoferrate, yeast and glucose are used as the anode feed, saline water feed, cathode oxidizing agent, biomass and substrate, respectively. In Comprehensive analyses of the treated water will be considered. Experimental tests will be performed while varying numerous parameters to achieve best system performance.

15:20 From spent sorbent to mercury scavenger Anjali Achazhiyath Edathil and Fawzi Banat (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) 33 In this study, we demonstrate the potential of spent porous graphitic carbon (spent­PGC) after aqueous sulfide removal from wastewater, as a low­cost sorbent for removing toxic and hazardous elemental mercury (Hgº) from natural gas. The performance was examined by treating the spent carbon with 50µg/m3 of Hgº in a continuous fixed bed flow reactor at a helium gas flow of 0.5 L/min. The adsorption results provide evidence that the presence and uniform distribution of sulfur moiety ascribed to the adsorption/oxidation of sulfide enables spent­PGC to act as an efficient mercury scavenger. The high adsorption capacity of 382.5 μg/g exhibited by spent­PGC at 50°C was found to be comparable to that of leading activated carbon currently used for gaseous mercury removal. Thus, the utilization of waste sorbent (spent­PGC) after sulfide remediation for mercury removal, can not only minimize the waste generation but also makes it more economical for gas processing industry.

M­SB2: Energy & Fuels

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Dimitrios C. Kyritsis (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Abdallah Sofiane Berrouk (the Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Low­Cost Metallurgical­Grade Silicon Anode For Lithium­Ion Batteries Rahmat Agung Susantyoko and Saif Almheiri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Although silicon anode has an excellent battery performance, the mass­production of silicon anode is not easy due to high material cost of high­purity silicon. We proposed the usage of metallurgical­grade silicon instead of high­purity silicon as anodes for lithium­ion batteries. First cycle experiment of metallurgical silicon shows four times larger specific capacity compared to graphite. Metallurgical silicon has advantages of lower material cost and higher electrical conductivity compared to high­purity silicon.

14:20 The Effects of the Purity of Vanadium on the Activity of Carbon Electrodes in Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries Chieh­Han Wu, Zainab Karam, Ibrahim H. S. Mustafa and Saif Almheiri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) can provide high charge­discharge cycling capabilities, low crossover rates, and excellent flexibilities in terms of its design due to its decoupled energy density and power density characteristics. The electrolyte, comprising of the vanadium active species contributes to a large portion of the cost, and the possibility of utilizing lower purity sources of vanadium would greatly facilitate lower costs of the battery, which would be vital for further commercialization. However, the presence of larger amounts of impurities may have an effect on the performance of the electrodes. Our Cyclic voltammetry results reveal higher performance can be attained when higher purity of vanadium is used. Morphological characterizations results revealed that the electrodes were stable in both high and low purity electrolytes.

14:40 Sonochemical Reactor Design for Biodiesel Production Mohammed Hussain (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Isam Janajreh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Biodiesel is a powerful alternate fuel that has one of the best feedstock in the form of Waste Cooking Oil (WCO). The biodiesel industry currently needs a continuous, compact, inexpensive and efficient reactor to make biodiesel flourish in the market and sonochemical reactors seems to be the best option. Hence, in this work a much needed task of a sonochemical reactor design development for biodiesel production is carried out through multiphysics simulations and experimental testing. From both simulation and experimental results we see above 90% conversion of biodiesel. Which implies the extremely good design.

15:00 Modeling and Simulation of an Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC) using IPSEpro Abdullah Mohiuddin (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this study an Integrated Solar Combined Cycle Power plant is proposed that has a total aperture area of 1308000 m2, and a natural gas fuel feed of 25 kg/sec to the Gas cycle. The integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) power plant has been designed, modeled, and simulated using IPSEpro© 6.0. With the purpose of finding optimum design­case ranges for key free design variables, the variation of key performance metrics (e.g., solar field efficiency, topping cycle efficiency, bottoming cycle efficiency, solar and fuel input fractions, and net cycle efficiency) has been studied against different values for these key free design variable .

15:20 Hybrid petri network sliding mode control of wind turbine for maximum power point tracking Aghiles Ardjal (Mouloud Mammeri University, Algeria); Maamar Bettayeb (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rachid Mansouri (Mouloud Mammeri University, Algeria) This paper presents a new design of hybrid Petri net sliding mode control (PNSMC) applied to reach the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of a variable speed wind energy conversion system. To solve the main and major undesired phenomenon faced by conventional sliding mode control, the high frequency oscillations known as chattering, the design of a hybrid controller based on Petri network sliding mode control (PNSMC) is proposed, in which a Petri network controller replaces the discontinuous part of the classical sliding mode control law. The new hybrid control law has been tested in Simulink/Matlab environment. Simulation results of the proposed control scheme present good dynamic and steady­state performance compared to the classical SMC with respect to the reduction of chattering phenomenon.

34 M­SC2: Material Science

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Adel Gougam (Masdar Instiute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Kamran Khan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Effect of copper and zinc doping on the physical properties and CO conversion activity of ceria catalyst prepared via microwave synthesis Alia Almutawa, Maguy Abi Jaoude and Kyriaki Polychronopoulou (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper investigates the effect of two dopants of M0.2Ce0.8Ox binary oxides prepared via microwave assisted sol­ gel method, where M = Cu, and Zn on the variations in the physical properties of the catalyst and correlates them to their catalytic performance. The crystallites structures were revealed by X­ray diffraction, and the morphological information were examined by SEM and BET methods. The catalytic performances were tested in the temperature range 0­530° C. The catalytic results showed that the catalytic behavior is optimized when ceria is doped in copper. Complete CO conversion 100% was achieved at low temperature ~ 50° C. This results attributed to high dispersion of CuO species in ceria lattice. XPS results revealed high oxygen storage capacity (OSC), and high reducibility of the surface active Cu+.

14:20 Using Carbon Nanostructures as binding material for H­Y zeolite and evaluating its catalytic performance Botagoz Zhuman (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Raed Hashaikeh (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Saepurahman Singaravel (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Zeolite is an interesting crystalline porous material that has high surface area, high thermal stability and catalytically active acid sites, which is mostly used in the petrochemical industry as a catalyst. The accessibility of active sites is usually hindered because of the binding material. Therefore, new material is needed for having good accessibility. The aim of this work is to utilise carbon nanostructures (CNS) as a binding material for H­Y zeolite micro and nano size particles. The unique structure and properties of CNS such as high surface area, good thermal stability and flexibility of fibrous structure make it promising material to hold and bind zeolite particles. H­Y zeolite/CNS composite catalyst found to be potentially promising material for catalytic application, which can be processed into certain shapes to meet industrial standards.

14:40 Selective Metal Deposition for Fabrication of Conductive Layers for 3­Dimensional Printed Polymeric Accelerometer Mariam Mansouri (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jisung Lee, Boo Hyun An and Daniel Choi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) 3­dimensional (3D) printing technology is an additive manufacturing process as a method of converting a virtual 3D model into a physical object. In this study, 3D printer is used to fabricate accelerometers with polymeric materials. In order to make the proof mass and the electrodes electrically conductive, surface of such structures are metallized with gold flakes. Silanization that is one of the most popular methods of attaching the gold materials was implemented using 3­mercaptopropyl trimethoxysilane to make the surfaces rich in thiol group which strongly binds gold flakes. The silanized surfaces was characterized with Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy, and attachment of the gold flakes to the surface of the proof mass and electrodes were investigated by scanning electron microscope.

15:00 Corrosion current measurement of reinforcing steels Abdulla Alshehhi, Yongsun Yi, Pyungyeon Cho, Andreas Schiffer and Maryam Qasem (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) To develop an applicable method to measure the localized corrosion current density of reinforcing steel the linear polarization resistance (LPR) tests were performed on carbon steel in a simulated concrete pore solution. To induce the localized corrosion, potentiostatic polarization was applied to samples. The depassivation and initiation of localized corrosion occurred was during the potentiostatic polarization, which was indicated by the sudden increase of the current. Under the condition that localized corrosion initiated, the LPR measurements provided reasonable values of corrosion current density, suggesting that this method could be applied to the measurement of localized corrosion current density to predict the service life of concrete structures.

15:20 Effects of annealing on the microstructure and physical properties of layered TiO2¬ composite based on black silicon substrate Frazly Alexander, Mustapha Jouiad and Jaime Viegas (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) We report on the effects of annealing at different temperatures and durations with respect to the microstructure evolution, optical properties and wettability on a water­splitting material based on TiO2 and black silicon. 40nm of TiO2 was directly deposited on top of the substrate, followed by 10 nm of Platinum. The 40 nm thick film of TiO2 was deposited using Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and the 10 nm of Pt was deposited by plasma deposition in order to study the potential Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) effect of Pt. Annealed specimens were screened by means of X­ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical spectroscopy. Additionally, in situ condensation inside an environmental SEM (ESEM) was conducted to assess the wettability. Our findings show that topography and the microstructure of the water splitting material play a significant role in the optical properties enhancement and the increase of the material's hydrophilicity.

35 M­SD2: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Abdel­Hamid Ismail Mourad (Unietd Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Lianxi Zheng (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Biosolids Thermal Conversion to Activated Carbon Using Wastewater Biogas Gustavo Alejandro Ospina Aldana (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The present paper presents the results of a study to assess the feasibility to integrate wastewater treatment byproducts; biogas, sludge and hydrogen sulfide, in a process which increases treatment sustainability converting sludge waste into hydrogen sulfide removal media using residual biogas flaring waste. Sludge characterization is shown and experimental laboratory scale tests performed at different thermal treatment conditions are presented. The resulting activated carbon material was evaluated using scanning electron microscope and Brunauer­Emmett­Teller (BET) porosity tests.

14:20 Finite Difference Solution of Lid­Driven Cavity Flow using Vorticity­Stream Function Formulation Omar Sharaf and Kursat Kara (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this investigation, the classical lid­driven cavity flow problem is numerically solved in two dimensions using finite difference approximations of the incompressible Navier­Stokes equations represented in the vorticity­stream function derived variables formulation. The FTCS and point Gauss­Seidel discretization schemes were used for the parabolic vorticity transport and elliptic stream function Poisson equations, respectively. The solution algorithm was run for 100 seconds at a time step of 0.001 seconds (i.e., 100,000 time iterations). Steady­state results were obtained after approximately 5 seconds. The streamline pattern, velocity field, vorticity field, and pressure field were generated and studied at transient and steady­state conditions. Good agreement with results from the literature is observed.

14:40 Cambered vs Symmetrical Blades: Design Considerations for VAWT Performance Sayyad B. Qamar and Isam Janajreh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Wind energy technology is growing rapidly in the energy production sector. Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) are coming to the fore to tackle areas with low wind speeds. It is critical to know the optimum design configuration of these VAWTs to maximize their performance. In this study cambered blades are investigated using CFD modelling to understand their effect on performance. It was found that cambered blades, improve the overall performance of the VAWT with better CP, at lower tip speed ratio. They also have more consistent torque production. Moderate camber also improved the self­starting ability of the VAWT.

15:00 The combined effect of transition metal and rare earth metal doping of CeO2 under microwave conditions towards enhancement of CO oxidation reaction Maitha Alketbi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Contrasting to burning fossil fuels for power generation, zero emission H2 fuel cells are a very promising alternative. Toward reaching the optimal fuel cell performance, the conditioning of hydrogen fuel is essential. Hydrogen mixture that contains carbon monoxide will affect the performance of the fuel cell negatively, as CO acts as poison to the Pt electrode. CO clean­up processes are used to solve the issue with various catalysts such as platinum, gold and ceria. In the present work, the microwave prepared cerium­lanthanum­copper oxides catalyst was synthesized with a wide range of Cu percentages (3­20%). By altering the morphology of the catalyst, the properties (porosity, oxygen storage capacity and particle size) and the performance (selectivity and activity) can be changed as well. The synthesized samples are then characterized using different analytical tools, such as, XRD, thermal studies, SEM and catalytic performance.

15:20 Optimization of Maskless Lithography Process: Impact of exposure dosage and laser beam path on produced line width Mohammed Ziauddin (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Abdel­Hamid Ismail Mourad (Unietd Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Saud Khashan (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The maskless lithography system is designed using UV Laser as a tool for rapid prototyping of microstructures. The G­ Code read by the system is generated using Inkscape graphics editing software. This software transforms the grayscale image for the intended shape to G­Code by tracing the bitmap vectors. The system is optimized to obtain the line width which is provided in the input G­Code. Negative photoresist and glass substrate are used to obtain the line feature sample. The system is studied with variation of exposure dosage and the operation path of laser beam by keeping other variables constant (thickness of spin coated layer, pre­bake time, focus spot, post­bake time, and development time). It was observed that controlling exposure produced line width precise to targeted value.

36 M­SE2: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Zeyar Aung (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Irfan Saadat (Faculty ­ Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Target Detection Using Learning Based Methods Mohammad Sahnoon and Khaled Assaleh (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Usman Tariq (AUS, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hasan Mir (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Space adaptive processing (SAP) is a method of target detection that uses a one­dimensional adaptive filter called the space filter in the spatial dimension. This method can be used with any desired array geometry. In the conventional method, the target­free training data is used to build the covariance matrix that is used in determining the spatial filter weights. This conventional method is called the adaptive beamforming method and it suffers from the limited generalization of the angle of arrival of the target between the training and testing stages. Also, it has less immunity to jamming and noise signals compared to the learning based methods. This paper introduces two target detection approaches that exist in the literature and shows their limitations. To overcome these limitations, a learning based technique that involves pattern classification, dictionary learning, and sparse features representation is introduced.

14:20 Wavelet Techniques for Colorizing Gray Level Images Muna Darweesh (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper discusses a new algorithm to produce a colored version of gray scale natural still images. This algorithm employs an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict RGB channels using the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). A group of natural color images is used to train three ANNs. The trained networks estimates low resolution RGB layers of the gray scale image which are the best match to the trained images. The colored version of the image is produced from the predicted RGB layers and information from grayscale image. The performances of the new algorithm are analyzed subjectively and objectively using the Peak Signal to Noise and Structural Similarity, as well as it is compared to similar algorithm based on the discrete cosine transform. Acceptable colorized images were obtained from different still images.

14:40 Bio­Inspired Self­Organizing Networks: A survey Khouloud Eledlebi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Dymitr Ruta (Etisalat British Telecom Innovation Centre, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Abdel F. Isakovic (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Wireless sensor networks emerge at the center of fast expanding Internet of Things revolution and hence research efforts are directed towards optimizing its composition and operational performance. The ability of these networks to sense and monitor a particular target space efficiently and effectively is closely related to the problem of space sensing and communication coverage. Composition of WSN in an open environment and managing a balance between the sensing and communication abilities of individual network nodes is not a trivial problem that needs to be solved to ensure efficient network communication and data transfer. Critical element of this problem is finding the optimal locations of sensor nodes that maximize network coverage subject to the complex communication constraints among the nodes. This paper aims to provide an overview of the related WSN coverage and connectivity problems, and summarize some of the techniques that can compose reliable WSNs at minimum time cost.

15:00 Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Hypopnea Events Using Short­Term ECG Recording Muath Abu Lebdeh and Hamza Al Maharmeh (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hani Saleh (Khalifa University of Sciente, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Baker Mohammad and Mahmoud Al­Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is a machine learning technique that can be used in classification. In this paper, Feedforward ANN with sigmoid activation function is used to classify Apnea and Hypopnea events from Electrocardiography (ECG) signals. Two ANN will be used, the first one will determine whether the behavior is normal or not. The second NN will work only in case of Apnea or Hypopnea events. According to literature, a lot of challenges have to be considered, especially when it comes to hardware implementation such as the number of neurons, the precision of weights, the required memory space and the processing speed. To detect the Apnea and Hypopnea events, we will use 45:25:1 neural network for the first stage and 27:27:1 for the second neural network with a sigmoid activation function. Additionally, the algorithm has been converted into RTL code and tested using Modelsim.

15:20 The effect of the training database size on the performance of convolutional neural network Bilal Taha and Naoufel Werghi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jorge Dias (University of Coimbra (UC), Portugal) Early detection of polyps play an essential role for the prevention of colorectal cancer. Manual clinical inspection to detect polyps have many limitations such as the lack of experience of the medical examiner and thus could result to either false or missed polyps. Computer aided diagnosis system has been used as a compliment tool to help the medical expert in the process of polyp detection. Since the computer aided diagnosis systems have been introduced, variety of methods have been proposed in the literature utilizing different types of features and classifiers. Nowadays, there is an increasing evolution of using deep learning methods in image processing because they show improvements compared to the methods used in the literature. This paper utilizes the convolutional neural network (CNN) as a feature extractor and study the effect of varying the database size used for training in the context of automatic polyp detection.

37 M­SF2: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chair: Abdulhadi Shoufan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Accurate Author Attribution of Emirati Tweets Mahmoud Khonji and Youssef Iraqi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) One of the key challenges in estimating the accuracy of existing author identification methods in solving problems that exist in Emirati social media tweets is the lack of evaluation datasets. This paper presents the first Emirati tweets author attribution dataset that we have consructed, the evaluation of the state of the art in author attribution, and a novel text vectorization method that achieved highest classification accuracy relative to other representation methods.

14:20 Small­Scale Devices Forensics: Acquisition Methods and Challenges Suaad Mohammed, Megana Padmanabhan, Muna AlKetbi and Farkhund Iqbal (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Small­scale devices have been widely growing and developing to the point where they can be used as computers. In this paper, we discuss the file systems, acquisition methods and challenges of six of the main small­scale devices: iPhones, iPads, Android phones, Android tablets, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. In a high level, we critique the file systems and acquisition methods and highlight the advantages and disadvantages of each.

14:40 On Using SAT Solvers for Generating Distinguishing Sequences for Finite State Machines Shams Y Shapsough, Ahmed Osman, Khaled El­Fakih and Fadi Aloul (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Finite state machines are used extensively in software modeling and testing. One of the important problems of FSM­ based testing is the derivation of distinguishing sequences (DSs). Several different methods are given for deriving a DS, and these methods can take a lot of time and processing power as the complexity of the FSM increases. In this paper, we examine the use of SAT solvers for deriving a distinguishing sequence of a deterministic FSM more efficiently. We present the satisfiability problem in general and how to expand that to FSM and the performance comparison using two known SAT Solvers and an exact algorithm.

15:00 Effective Distributed Control Algorithms for Smart Lighting Systems Areg Karapetyan, Chi­Kin Chau and Khaled Elbassioni (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Intelligent automatic lighting control systems are promising approaches that could potentially reduce energy consumption of lighting significantly. Such systems typically rely on the interplay of light controls and wireless sensors, deployed within an optimization model with an objective of minimizing energy consumption, while maintaining user satisfaction. Several prior studies tackled this optimization question form one angle or the other, but most of them look at simplified versions, and are based on heuristics providing no guarantees on performance optimality. This letter makes an effort towards devising a more comprehensive energy expenditure minimizing intelligent smart lighting system for a real­world dynamic environment. The envisioned system considers a convex programming formulation that allows leveraging versatility of a recently developed online primal­dual framework. Based on this formulation, an efficient distributed algorithms for solving the optimization problem in real­time will be developed that are scalable with respect to the number of light sources and sensors.

15:20 Network­Aware VM Placement Technique for Cloud Data Centers Fatima Mohammed Alqayedi (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Khaled Salah (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jamal Zemerly (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In today's data centers, Virtual Machine Placement (VMP) is a challenging problem and far from being resolved. Most placement algorithms that are found in the literature do not consider key factors related to satisfying network end­to­ end delay for the VMs to be placed, nor the impact of network activities generated due to the activities of other VMs that are running cloud applications and services. Such key factors can not be ignored, as they contribute significantly to the Service Level Objective (SLO) response time experienced by the cloud users. This paper presents a heuristic network­aware virtual machine placement technique that considers end­to­end delay for VMs and delays caused by existing network traffic of other applications running on the same cloud infrastructure.

38 M­SG2: Health and Life Sciences

Room: 203007 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Jeremy Teo (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Fatme Al­Anouti (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Contribution of IncX3 Type Plasmids to the Emergence of NDM­5 Producer Enterobacteriaceae in Abu Dhabi Emirate Shaimaa Mouftah (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Spread of carbapenemase producing multi­drug resistant Enterobacteriaceae is a major public health concern. We investigated the genetic context of the rare blaNDM­5 gene encountered in hospitals of Abu Dhabi Emirate by genotyping of the clinical isolates, and by establishing the complete sequence of plasmids carrying the gene. Based on our findings this carbapenemase occurred in the region partially due to clonal spread, however similar IncX3 plasmids carrying the blaNDM­5 gene significantly contributed to its emergence.

14:20 Coating Nanoparticles with Bovine Serum Albumin Nahla Rizk and Matthew Martin (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Nanoparticles are being integrated into biological systems at a rapid and alarming rate despite the poor understanding of their stability, toxicity, and interactions in living systems. The overall goal of this project is to develop reliable methods for measuring nanoparticle core charge and coating stability. Here we show extinction spectroscopy and light scattering measurements of gold nanoparticles confirming that a protein monolayer is bound to the nanoparticle surface.

14:40 Glycerol promotes D151Y mutated beta­galactosidase maturation and elvates its residual enzyme activity in GM1­ganglosidosis cells Fedah Mohamed (UAE University, United Arab Emirates, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Lihadh Al­ Gazali (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Fatma Al Jasmi (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Bassam Ali (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Lysosomal storage disorders are a group of more than 60 inherited metabolic disorders characterized by the accumulation of toxic products in lysosomes due to certain enzyme deficiencies. GM1­ganglosidosis is autosomal recessive neurological LSD caused by beta­galactosidase deficiency when both copies of GLB1 gene are mutated. Several missense mutations have been reported in patients with GM1­ganglosidosis. One such mutation is D151Y in GLB1 previously reported in an Emirati family with GM1­ganglosidosis. In this study, we have characterized the effects of this mutation using expression, localization, and activity assays. We show that the mutation is causing trafficking defect with retention of the mutant protein in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and thus failure to reach the lysosomes. However, our data demonstrate that this trafficking defect can be reversed using glycerol as a chemical chaperone. This finding raises the possibility of using pharmaceutical chaperones as a possible personalized treatment for this disorder.

15:00 Differentiation of Stem Cells into Insulin Secreting Cells under the influence of the epigenetic modifiers 5­Aza­2′­Deoxycytidine and Suberanilohydroxamic Acid Ibrahim Elsharkawi, Divyasree Sandeep and Ahmed El Serafy (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Current diabetes management are associated with many complications and do not provide a cure. Stem cells offer a hope for permanent cure through the possible differentiation. The current differentiation methods do not produce homogeneous beta­cells. DNA­methylation and histone­deacetylation can render many genes irresponsive to the induction protocols. This study investigated the potential of producing functional beta cells using an epigenetic approach. MG63 cells were treated with a DNA methylation inhibitor or a histone deacetylases inhibitor followed by a differentiation protocol. Then, glucose­stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS) was tested. Insulin production inside the cells was detected using immunofluorescence, while insulin secreted in the media was measured by ELISA. Moreover, the gene expression was analyzed for β­ cells markers. The results suggested that AZA decreased the global DNA methylation by more than 50% of the vehicle, as well as enhanced the insulin production and secretion in comparison to the control, DMSO and SAHA

15:20 Aluminum Oxide and Iron (III) Oxide Nanoparticles: Biocompatibility and Toxicity Sarah Azzam (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kinana Al Adem (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jeremy Teo (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Metal oxide nano­particles play an important role in the fields of imaging, tissue engineering as well as drug delivery. However, several studies have shown that they exhibit toxic effects on cells in in­vitro culture. We further investigated these findings by testing the effect on two types of nanoparticles, Aluminum oxide and Iron (III) oxide, on in vitro cultures of Human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cells. The Live/Dead assay, MTT assay and immunofluorescent staining were used to test for the cytotoxic effect of the nano­particles at the increasing concentrations. Results have clearly shown a cytotoxic effect that is only significant as the concentrations of the nano­particles are increased to 100μg/ml. However, at lower concentrations the nano­particles do not exhibit a significantly toxic effect. In addition, the collected data show a greater cytotoxic effect of the Iron (III) oxide nanoparticles in comparison with the Aluminum oxide nanoparticles.

39 M­SH2: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Room: 203009 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Labeeb Bsoul (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Chet Jablonski (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Teachers Views of the Inclusion of Socioscientific Issues Sara El Arbid (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The purpose of this study is to explore the views of High School Science teachers in Al Ain with regards to the inclusion of Socioscientific Issues (SSIs) into the Science Curriculum. A Mixed method approach was used by distributing a survey to the teachers and analyzing the results. The findings indicated that the teachers believe that SSIs should be included into the curriculum. It is recommended that a more specific study is done on the place and the factors that may facilitate or impede the inclusion of SSI's into the curriculum.

14:20 Gauging the Gain in English Oral and Written Communication Skills by Using Authentic Materials of Arab College Students: A Case Study Maha Alhabbash (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Negmeldin Alsheikh (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This case study is aimed at gauging the gain in oral and written communication skills for 5 Arab college students through using authentic materials in the UAE. An explanatory mixed method design was adopted to achieve the purpose of this study. In the first phase of the study quantitative means were used by conducting a pre and a posttest after implementation of an extensive program for two months. The second phase featured a collection of qualitative data by means of oral and written documents analysis, anxiety self­report scale analysis and a semi­structured interview. The results gleaned from the pre and post­test showed that there was a noticeable gain in the oral communication more than in the written. Qualitatively, authentic materials led to tangible gain in vocabulary, language structures and expressions, gradual decrease in anxiety level, practical use of the language, and positive views towards the use of authentic materials.

14:40 Reconsidering a Postbellum Slave Narrative: Mohammad Ali Ben Said's Autobiography (1873) Muna Al Badaai (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Mohammad Ali Ben Said (1836­1882), better known as Nicholas Said, arrived in the United States after he had gained his freedom. Few studies have discussed The Autobiography of Nicholas Said; a Native of Bornou, Eastern Soudan, Central Africa. Florence Marfo's article "African Muslims in African American Literature" discusses possible reasons why commentators have excluded enslaved African Muslims from African American anthologies. Regarding Said, Marfo assumes a reason for exclusion is the absence of the anti­slavery theme. However, Allan Austin states that Said's story "is one of the few substantial lives we have of antebellum Africans in America". Ralph Keen comments on the back cover of Said's Autobiography edited by Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, that the discovery of the Autobiography is "a significant addition to the canon of African­American writing". This paper aims to position Said's Autobiography in American literature through reviewing criticism on postbellum slave narratives and analyzing the text.

15:00 Parental Involvement in Children Education in Al Ain Shereen Mahmoud (UAEU, Palestine) This case study aimed mainly to understand parental involvement in children education in Al Ain. The study was guided by one main question and three sub questions and used qualitative research approach. Data for this study were collected through semi structured interviews. Six mothers and fathers of children who are studying in Al Ain governmental and private schools in different education level were interviewed to answer research questions. The study revealed that parents understand that education is lifelong process and they believe in its importance. Moreover, the study clarified that parental involvement in children education in Al Ain has different levels and shapes due to parents' gender and children age and gender. Mothers are more involving in their children education than fathers. In addition, the parents' responses clarified that they focus on parent­initiated involvement activities due to variety of barriers that affect their participation in school­initiated parental involvement activities.

15:20 Understanding the perception of Non­Muslims about Islam in UAE and proposing media as a solution Urwa Mohd Tariq (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Islam, the most misunderstood religion, bears the impact of misconceptions through powerful mass media, aligned to deceitful political and corporate interests'. Since Islam is the final message of Allah (SWT) to all mankind, scholars of Islam have stressed on the fact that 'Muslims are entrusted with the duties of Da'wah among non­Muslims. This report is intended to focus on effective Da'wah in United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) and understand the role of ICT in disseminating the Islamic knowledge to Non­Muslim residents in this region. At present, statistical data covering the interest rate of non­Muslims to learn Islam is absent. Also, the availability of Da'wah mediums is through formal organizations only, hence, the gap between effective Da'wah and the non­Muslims pursuing to know Islam is distend. Due to this reason, a new media is proposed, essentially an English Radio station about Islam to address the above issues and help bridge the gap.

40 Monday, March 20, 15:40 ­ 16:00

M­CB3: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Monday, March 20, 16:00 ­ 17:40

M­SA3: Chemistry & Chemical Engineering

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Emad Alhseinat (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Deborah Gater (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Use of Natural Adsorbents Derived From Date Pits for Lead Removal From Solution Haliemeh Sweidan (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this research, natural adsorbents were derived from date pits in order to test their adsorption ability in removing lead ions from wastewater. In order to maximize the adsorption capacity of the adsorbents, the effect of factors on adsorption including lead concentration, adsorbent dose, time, and adsorbent type were studied. Initial investigations were used as screening experiments in the building of an experimental design with Response Surface Methodology, which was carried out in order to quantify the effects of the factors, and fine the optimum adsorption conditions to remove the maximum amount of lead. Three adsorbent types were compared: raw date pits (RDP), date pits which had been subjected to Soxhlet extraction (SDP) and date pits which had been subjected to supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (CO2DP). It was found that all adsorbent types have a capacity for adsorbing lead, with CO2DP having the highest capacity.

16:20 Production of Furfural rich stream from salt­tolerant Biomass Mohamed Al Ghailani (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Salt tolerant plants such as Arthrocnemum macrostachyum and Avicena marina are of special interest to Abu Dhabi owing to the coastal desert conditions of this region. These plants thrive in salty water conditions and can withstand the high temperatures. Previous studies and current work show that there are many applications for this plant ranging from the production of pharmaceuticals to the production of jet fuel. This research focuses on the production of high value biochemicals such as furfural as an additional application for this biomass. The study looks at the effect of harsh pretreatments on the biomass at 220C in a Parr reactor to further degrade the sugars into HMF and furfural. The biomass was characterized after performing soxhlet extractions using water and ethanol for 10 hours each . Additionally, the effect of washing on the biomass was studied to see if washing before or after pressing has an impact

16:40 Development of Semi­Analytical Solution for Ottengraf and Van Den Oever Biofilter Model Mubarak Salih (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this work, Adomian Decomposition Method (ADM) was utilized to solve a steady state biofilter model proposed by Ottengraf and Van Den Oever. The method enabled us to find semi­analytical expressions of pollutant concentration profiles in the gas phase and within the biofilm phase. Furthermore, the solution obtained from ADM was compared with previously published experimental data as well as the exact solution. Excellent agreement was noted which proves the validity of ADM.

17:00 Bingham Fluid Flow in the Entrance Region of a Pipe Basma Baioumy, Rachid Chebbi and Nabil Abdel Jabbar (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The isothermal laminar flow of a Bingham fluid in the entrance region of a circular pipe has been studied previously by many authors using different approaches. As current research stands, the classical momentum integral approach provides analytical results that do not match the fully developed flow at the end of the entrance region. On the other hand, numerical results do not suffer from this shortcoming; however, no experimental data are available for comparison with the numerical results in the entrance region. The objective of this investigation is to determine the entrance region length in addition to the velocity and pressure profiles in that region using a modified momentum integral method that improves the present boundary­layer model.

17:20 Oil in Water Emulsion Separation in PES (Polyether sulfone) & Nitrocellulose Microfiltration Membranes Yang Yang (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Two kinds of commercial microfiltration membranes (PES and Nitrocellulose) were characterized and tested for oil in water emulsion separation. Wettability of the commercial membranes were checked through CA and UCA measurements. The top surface morphology was characterized with SEM (scanning electron microscope). Separation efficiency were evaluated by checking Turbidity of filtrates and measuring TOC value of the feed solutions and corresponding filtrates. Experimental results revealed that: 1) The commercial membranes show underwater oleophobicity, with average WCA around 145.8º for PES membrane, with average WCA around 137.1º for Nitrocellulose membrane; 2) Two different membranes present separation efficiency higher than 90% for Dodecanese in water Emulsion, higher than 98% for Hexane in water emulsions.

41 M­SB3: Energy & Fuels

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Noureddine Harid (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Lianxi Zheng (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Comparision Between Plasma And Entrained Flow Gasification For Energy Recovery From Municipal Solid Waste Luca Mazzoni and Isam Janajreh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper the performance of entrained flow gasification is compared to that of plasma gasification for the energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW). An entire combined cycle power plant is simulated for both technologies using the software Aspen Plus to assess the cold gas efficiency, the syngas lower heating value and the plant efficiency. While plasma gasification showed better results when compared to the entrained flow gasification, the overall plant efficiency is grater in the latter case. When pure oxygen is used as oxidizer in the reactor the maximum plant efficiency of the entrained flow gasification combined cycle plant (IGCC) is 40.7% while that of the integrated plasma gasification combined cycle plant (IPGCC) is 33%. Although the IGCC plant efficiency is greater than the IPGCC plant, the latter is considered being more practical in handling waste with highly variable composition and heating value.

16:20 Iron (III) Oxide and Carbon Nanostructures BuckyPaper without Binder and Metal Current Collector Anode for Lithium Ion Batteries Zainab Karam, Rahmat Agung Susantyoko, Ayoob Al Hammadi and Saif Almheiri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Unique features of Lithium Ion batteries let them to be an interesting area to develop. Herein, Carbon Nanostructures and Iron (III) Oxide were used to improve the performance of Anode electrode. Lower Iron (III) Oxide mass loading ratio with Carbon Nanostructures electrode showed better performance electrode, where the specific capacity will be the highest.

16:40 Influence on Solvent ­ Membrane Interaction on Species Crossover and Capacity Decay in Non­Aqueous Redox Flow Batteries Musbaudeen Bamgbopa and Saif Almheiri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study is an investigation into the effects of solvent ­ membrane interactions and stability on the cycling performance of NARFBs, particularly in relation to capacity decay/retention from active species crossover. We consider two types of membranes: Nafion 115 cation exchange membrane and a hybrid Nafion 115/SiO2, in combination with two types of electrolytes: pure acetonitrile and 84/16 vol% acetonitrile/1,3 dioxolane solvent mixture.

17:00 The Effects of Carboxyl Functional Groups on the Reversibility of MWCNTs Freestanding sheets toward the positive half­cell of VRFBs Ibrahim H. S. Mustafa, Tawaddod Alkindi, Ayoob Al Hammadi, Giovanni Palmisano and Saif Almheiri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The effects of oxygen groups' functionalization on the electrochemical activity of MWCNTs buckypaper electrodes toward the positive half­cell redox couples of a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery (VRFB) were investigated. The heat treatment method employed was successful in introducing carboxyl groups onto the buckypaper electrodes as proven by the FTIR analysis. Although SEM results showed no adverse effects on morphology, Raman spectroscopy showed that the treatments did induce defects into the structure of the MWCNTs. Furthermore, electrochemical results suggested that although attainable peak currents decreased as a function of the heat treatments, the overall reversibility of the electrode improved.

17:20 Nonlinear synergetic control of wind turbine for maximum power point tracking Aghiles Ardjal (Mouloud Mammeri University, Algeria); Maamar Bettayeb (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rachid Mansouri (Mouloud Mammeri University, Algeria) This paper focuses to improve wind turbine systems efficiency, in other words, to maximise the output power delivered by the wind turbine. To do this it is necessary to have a good controller. In this study, we use a nonlinear synergetic controller. Synergetic control theory is applied to reach the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) of a variable speed energy conversion system. A comparison with the robust sliding mode control allowed us to see the effectiveness of the proposed controller. These controllers are tested in a Simulink/Matlab environment. Simulation results present good performance compared to the classical sliding mode controller.

42 Monday, March 20, 16:00 ­ 17:20

M­SC3: Material Science

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Ebru Gunister (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Shadi Balawi (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Influence of Thermal Annealing on TiO2­based Water Splitting Composite to Achieve Full Spectrum Solar Energy Jehad Abed, Meera AlMheiri, Jaime Viegas and Mustapha Jouiad (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Water­splitting composite consisting of three thin films (SiO2, Al2O3 and TiO2) with embedded distribution of (Au) structures on top were fabricated and characterized. The effect of thermal annealing on the evolution of the microstructure, optical and physical properties of the water­splitting composite was studied for temperatures ranging from 450oC­1100oC under atmospheric conditions. The crystal structure, chemical composition and wettability alteration were determined using X­ray Diffractometer, Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscope. The influence of thermal annealing on extending the optical absorption spectrum to the visible region was evaluated by UV­Vis spectrophotometer. Our findings revealed that thermal annealing leads to the transformation of amorphous TiO2 to its more stable phase anatase. This transformation enhances significantly the optical properties and increases the hydrophilicity of the material surface making it suitable for water­splitting activity. More importantly, the presence of plasmonic nanostructures allows the material to extend its photoactivity to full solar spectrum.

16:20 Hydrogenation of TiO2 for Visible Light Photocatalysis Safa Alzaim (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Aikifa Raza, Jin You Lu and TieJun Zhang (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Hydrogenation is a promising technique for TiO2 thin films to extend their visible light absorption ability in photocatalytic applications. However, fundamental insight of the TiO2 hydrogenation dynamics, which distinguish the optical effects of various processing conditions, is still missing. In order to clarify the physics of hydrogenated TiO2, thin film samples were analyzed over fabrication time. The flow rate, temperature, and surface area of the films affect the gas­solid kinetics, because the hydrogenation is a complex process which cannot be modelled as simple diffusion. Moreover, as hydrogenation continues over time, the intensity of the Raman spectroscopic and FT­IR signals changes. This study links the Raman and FT­IR signal changes to the structural changes, which can be predicted by density functional theory as a function of the diffusion of hydrogen into the film. This will in turn explain the differences in observed photocatalytic properties from different fabrication conditions.

16:40 Structure and Mechanical Properties of UHMWPE/CNT nanocomposites Methawee Choosri (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kumar Shanmugam and Chappidi Siva Kumar Reddy (MIST, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Ultra­high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) nanocomposites with 0.05, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 and 1.0 wt% CNT were fabricated by mechanical mixing followed by compression molding. The highest degree of crystallinity is obtained for 0.1 wt% CNT and beyond 0.5 wt% CNT, the values were lower than the pure UHMWPE. The non­isothermal decomposition showed that increase in CNT content, increases the degradation temperature leading to better thermal stability. For 1.0 wt% CNT, there was approximately 3% of ash residue left from the decomposition which affects its decomposition temperature but still has a better result than pure UHMWPE. Mechanical properties of the composites were improved where the elastic modulus was increased by 11.4% with the addition of 1.0 wt% CNT.

17:00 Inter­laminar Shear Stress Function for Adhesive Bonded Metal Laminates Nguyen Viet (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Wael Zaki (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rehan Umer (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) A new analytical model is proposed for the estimation of inter­laminar shear stress in bonded metal laminates consisting of an arbitrary number of layers. The interface shear stress in the laminates is related to the difference in average axial strain and elongation between adjoining layers through a newly proposed inter­laminar shear stress function (ILSSF). The parameters of the ILSSF are determined from finite element simulations using a data fitting procedure. The accuracy of the model is investigated by comparing experimental measurements of average elongation in three­layer aluminum laminates to values obtained using the model. Good agreement with the experimental results is achieved for several types of adhesives and for different ratios of adhesive­to­layer thicknesses.

43 Monday, March 20, 16:00 ­ 17:40

M­SD3: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Kursat Kara (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Afshin Goharzadeh (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Experimental Investigation of Liquid­Gas Two­Phase Flows in a Horizontal Pipe with Sudden Expansion Dawei Zhang and Afshin Goharzadeh (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study is focused on experimental characterization of liquid­gas two­phase flows across a sudden expanded diameter in a transparent horizontal pipe with the area ratio of 0.36. Experimental tests depend on two key parameters, liquid and gas flow rates. Behavior of slug flows near the expanded region of the pipe is studied. Bubble velocity, Bubble blast phenomenon, and the horizontal water jet characteristics were investigated using High Speed Photography. Through image processing, using MATLAB, it is found that bubble blast velocity is independent on the water or gas flow rates, while bubble moving velocity and water jet length can be quantified as a function of the water­ gas flow rates. The experiments in this study provide fundamental insights into the influence of the sudden expansion on water­air behaviors.

16:20 Identification Procedure for a Nonlinear Model for Iron­based Shape Memory Alloys Cheikh Cisse (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Wael Zaki (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The paper presents the identification procedure for a 3D macroscopic constitutive model for iron­based shape memory alloys (Fe­SMAs) that takes into account the variation of elastic stiffness during phase transformation and the influence of plastic slip on the transformation process. The constitutive equations are derived from an expression of the free energy potential. The loading conditions for phase transformation and plastic deformation are obtained by requiring that the governing thermodynamic forces derive from an appropriate dissipation potential and the corresponding evolution of the internal variables is described by means of associated flow rules.

16:40 Mechanical Properties of Skeletal Gyroid Cellular Solids using 3D Printing Aliaa M. Abou­Ali (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE) & Alexandria University, Egypt); Rashid Abu Al­Rub (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Oraib Al­ketan (Masdar Inastitute of Sciense and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Reza Rowshan (New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Lightweight materials with complex structures such as cellular solids have proven to possess desirable properties, while the density is reduced. However, in common foam structures stress concentrations might occur at the point of junction and is subjected to multi­axial stresses and progressive failures. Therefore, this paper will investigate the mechanical behavior of a novel type of foams (Gyroid skeletal cellular structure) where stress concentrations are minimized.

17:00 Mechanical Behavior of 3D Printed Architected Co­Continuous Composites Oraib Al­ketan (Masdar Inastitute of Sciense and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rashid Abu Al­Rub (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) in this work, a co­continuous composite with a mathematically generated reinforcement topology is presented and mechanically tested. The co­continuous composite is made of a soft matrix phase reinforced with a solid phase. The solid phase has an architecture based on the triply periodic minimal surfaces. This approach in designing composite materials benefits from the architecture­topology relationship. Results show great potential in employing this approach to design and tailor the properties of co­continuous composites.

17:20 Characterization of biosolids produced in municipal wastewater treatment in Abu Dhabi Gustavo Alejandro Ospina Aldana (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Botagoz Zhuman (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Biosolids, or sewage sludge treated at a wastewater treatment plant are generated in great quantities worldwide and are growing with increasing population. In the UAE, it can be estimated that 457 ton of biosolids are produced every day. Globally, the beneficial use of biosolids is still low, and it is mostly landfilled, which leads to greenhouse emissions and represents a substantial operating cost for wastewater treatment plants. In most wastewater treatment plants, along with biosolids, biogas is generated, opening possibilities for thermal applications of sewage sludge. However, each plant produces biosolids with different compositions and properties, not yet known in the case of UAE wastewater plants, in order to propose a suitable beneficial use to avoid landfilling. Biosolids samples were collected at an Abu Dhabi Wastewater Treatment Plant and characterized. A high proportion of organic compounds (65%) was measured, along with beneficial compounds for thermal reactions.

44 M­SE3: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Mihai Sanduleanu (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Zeyar Aung (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Application Specific Processor for Caesar Cryptography Temesghen Tekeste (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ghalia Tello (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Lilas Alrahis and Nourhan Mohamed Elsayed (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hani Saleh (Khalifa University of Sciente, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) n this paper, the design of an application specific Central Processing Unit (CPU) for Caesar cipher encryption is proposed. The proposed system takes an input string, encrypts it, store it in memory for displays or transmission. Moreover, the same system was used for decryption simultaneously. After the Instruction Set Architecture is designed, an RTL code using verilog was developed in order to realize the system. An FPGA was used to emulate the system. Designed CPU was synthesized using 65nm technology and the system could operate at a power consumption of 434 µ W when operating at 100 MHz from a power supply of 1V. Application­specific processors have advantage over general purpose processors in operating at ultra­low power consumption.

16:20 Efficient and Secure Download Protocol for Software Defined Radios Ahmed Al Hammadi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Software defined radio (SDR) is one of the major innovations in the digital communications industry due to its flexibility and reconfigurability features. The extra features from the SDR come with new security challenges for the radio system that uses reconfigurable software/waveform instead of hardware­ only solution. One of the main security problems is how to download a waveform securely to the SDR, with minimum cost, simple key management, and reduced risk. We propose a solution that combines three main building blocks: Physically unclonable functions, software­based attestation, and proof of secure erasure. The protocol is very efficient with low complexity and low cost.

16:40 Compressive Sensing for ECG Signals: A Survey Hamza Al Maharmeh (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hani Saleh (Khalifa University of Sciente, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Baker Mohammad and Mohammed Ismail (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) According to Nyquist rate theorem, in order to acquire the data without loss, you have to sample at a rate equal or more than twice the bandwidth. However, this will result in occupying more memory space especially in applications that have stringent memory and power constraints. Compressive sensing or sampling (CS) is a compressing technique that can be used to capture the data at significantly lower rate. This paper discusses the contemporary research work on compressive sensing for ECG signals. Additionally, many reconstruction algorithms have been discussed such as regularized least­squares (RLS) and Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP). Many efforts have been done for hardware implementation of CS technique, a VLSI implementation of OMP is introduced.

17:00 An Efficient Switched­Capacitor DC­DC Buck Converter for Self­powered Electronics Dima Kilani (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammad Alhawari (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Baker Mohammad (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hani Saleh (Khalifa University of Sciente, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammed Ismail (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper introduces an efficient reconfigurable, multiple voltage gain switched­capacitor DC­DC buck converter as part of a power management unit for wearable electronics. The proposed switched­capacitor converter has an input voltage of 0.6V to 1.2V generated from an energy harvesting source. The switched­capacitor converter utilizes pulse frequency modulation to generate multiple regulated output voltage levels, namely 1V, 0.8V and 0.6V based on two reconfigurable bits over a wide range of load currents from 10uA to 800uA. The switched­capacitor converter is designed and fabricated in 65nm low power CMOS technology and occupies an area of 0.493mm2. The design utilizes a stack of MIM and MOS capacitances to optimize the circuit area and efficiency. The measured peak efficiency is 80% at a load current of 800uA and regulated load voltage of 1V.

17:20 A new color image encryption/decryption scheme based on synchronization of fractional­order discrete­time chaotic system Sarah KASSIM (Mouloud Mammeri University, Algeria); Hamid Hamiche (Mouloud MAMMERI University, Algeria); Said Djennoune (Laboratoire de conception et conduite de systèmes de productique, Algeria); Maamar Bettayeb (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, a new color image encryption/decryption scheme based on synchronization of fractional­order discrete­ time chaotic systems is presented. The method is based on permutation­diffusion structure. The parameters and fractional orders of the chaotic system play the role of secret keys of the encryption/decryption scheme. To increase the robustness of the proposed scheme, the plain image is firstly permuted by the sequence generated from the fractional system. Then, by generating another sequence by the same system, the permuted image is diffused using XOR operation. Based on dead beat obsever, the exact synhronization of fractional­order system is established, and the decryption is achieved. Simulation results are preseneted to highlight the performances of the proposed method.

45 M­SF3: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Andreas Henschel (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Rabeb Mizouni (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Performance Evaluation of Fault­Tolerant Datacenter Network Topologies Heba Helal and Rana Ahmed (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) With an increase in cloud applications and services, data centers are experiencing tremendous increase in data traffic. Data center network (DCN) topology plays an important role in providing acceptable level of performance to cloud applications. This paper presents some initial results of simulation studies comparing the performance of several well­ known DCN topologies under the same simulation and inter­network traffic workload environments. We also discuss the performance results for the topologies when a link or a switch in the network fails.

16:20 Coral Microbial Community Composition and Enrichment Analyses Jadran Sessa (Masdar, Bosnia and Herzegovina); Andreas Henschel (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Coral reefs represent one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet. Coral reefs consist of colonies of tiny sea animals belonging to the phylum Cnidaria, and of more complex, yet not so well known microbial communities. A number of factors including microbial community composition, climate change and human impact affect their sustainability and overall health. In this study, microbial community composition of two coral reefs from Lizard Island were evaluated. The most abundant bacterial phyla were Proteobacteria, with the total presence of 51.73%, followed by Cyanobacteria (15.86%) and Bacteriodetes (10.41%). Additionally, differential abundance analysis was performed for operational taxonomic units (OTUs) present in at least two of the examined samples, based on clustering by compartment. Subsequently, significant OTUs were identified, and enrichment analysis was performed, revealing differentially significant OTUs. The proposed methodology in this work will be used in the future for addressing coral related diseases and bleaching.

16:40 Model of Optimizing Power Consumption of IaaS Cloud Computing Huda Ibrahim, Raafat Aburukba and Khaled El­Fakih (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Cloud computing infrastructures are designed to support accessibility and availability of various services to consumers over the Internet. However, from service provider's perspective, the growing demand of cloud infrastructure services result in an increase in power consumption and high carbon emissions. In this paper a linear programming (LP) model is developed to optimize power consumption of the Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) by scheduling requests from consumers to resources that result in less power usage while meeting the deadline for each request and maintaining the quality of service. Lingo™ Solver is used to provide the exact solution of the proposed model.

17:00 Predicting the functions of proteins using biomedical Text mining Amira Al­Aamri (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kamal Taha (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Yousof Al­Hammadi (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Dirar Homouz (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Text mining has become an important topic in bioinformatics research since the past decade has witnessed the massive growth in the biomedical literature. Mining the biomedical literature has resulted in an incredible number of computational algorithms that assist many bioinformatics researchers. In this paper, we discuss text mining techniques used in bioinformatics, specifically in the area of protein function prediction and by using co­occurrence approach. We present our approach for predicting the functions of human proteins by extracting information and presenting their co­ occurrence relation from the biomedical literature.

17:20 Performance Evaluation of Code­based and Model­based All­Uses Test Suites Ragini Gupta, Mahitab Hassan and Khaled El­Fakih (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Extended Finite State Machines or EFSMs are considered very powerful tools in modelling various applications, including communication and reactive systems. It is, as a result, important to thoroughly test such machines. Nevertheless, such a process can be quite expensive and time­consuming. Therefore, finding high quality test suites to do the task is very crucial. For this purpose, this paper compares the fault coverage of All­Uses test suites derived from EFSM specifications and All­Uses test suites derived from the (Java) code implementations of these specifications. Fault coverage is determined using mutation and coverage length scores of the test suites with respect to the code mutants. The results acquired show that code­based All­Uses test suites achieved 63.7% and 64.2 in terms of the mutation score and coverage length score, respectively, allowing it to slightly outperform model­based All­Uses test suites, which attained the scores 58.7% and 58.6, correspondingly.

46 Monday, March 20, 16:00 ­ 17:20

M­SG3: Health and Life Sciences

Room: 203007 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Taleb Al­Tal (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Fatme Al­Anouti (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Novel OSU­2S­derived Small­Molecule Targeted Chemotherapeutic Agents for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Dana Zaher, Srinivasulu Vunnam, Fatima Hersi, Hany A Omar and Taleb Al­Tal (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment is quite challenging. OSU­2S a non­immunosuppressive FTY720 analogue was developed to serve as a new promising option for HCC treatment through its ability to activate PKCδ­dependent apoptosis. The drug design group at Sharjah Institute for Medical Research (SIMR), has recently developed 18 compounds using OSU­2S as a scaffold aiming to improve its activity and safety. SIMR­compounds showed promising anticancer activity on all tested cell lines (Hep3B, HepG2, A549 and HT­29) with high safety on normal cells. The enhanced activity of caspase­3/7 and catalytic cleavage of PKCδ indicated that the novel compounds maintained the major mechanism of action of OSU­2S. Moreover, SIMR­compounds affected the cell cycle progression and the cells migration rate. Finally, SIMR­compounds synergistically enhanced the anti­proliferative effects of sorafenib. In conclusion, SIMR­compounds represent a promising therapeutically relevant approach for the treatment of HCC. However, further studies are necessary to validate their antitumor activity in vivo.

16:20 Bionic Implantable Sphincter for Stress Urinary Incontinence Kinana Al Adem (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Sarah S. Bawazir (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hyunjoo Lee (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ahsan Khandoker and Kinda Khalaf (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tim McGloughlin (Khalifa University & University of Limerick, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Cesare Stefanini (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is defined as urine leakage during bladder filling due to failure in the urethral closure mechanism. This global health challenge is estimated to affect 167 million male and female patients in 2018. Conservative and drug therapies are used as first line treatment, although implantation of an artificial urinary sphincter (AUS) is typically required for severe SUI cases. The gold standard AUS is the AMS 800, however, urethral atrophy commonly results from the high constant pressure which is exerted by AUS cuff on the urethra. To minimize urethral atrophy, an electromechanical AUS prototype was fabricated. Importantly, the concept of a closed loop control system for the produced AUS prototype with the integration of an implantable bladder volume sensor is introduced in this work. To test the bionic AUS prototype, an in vitro simulator system was built which consists of a ureter, a bladder and a urethra.

16:40 Relationship Between Heartrate Variability and Daily Activities during Day and Night time Khaled Abdel­Raouf Ahmed (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ahsan Khandoker (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Heartrate variability (HRV) is a unique parameter in that it allows monitoring of activity of autonomic nervous system (ANS). The aim of this study is to investigate how ANS activity changes from daytime to nighttime by using 24 h ECG recordings. In this study we collected ECG and acceleration data for a healthy patient over 24 h. We then filtered the data by decomposing the signal and observing fluctuations that match with daily activities. We applied power law and detrended fluctuation analyses to look at the difference between daytime and night time HRV.

17:00 The association of rs5219 of KCNJ11 gene with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Emirati population Mariam Al Ali, Sarah El hajj chehadeh and Habiba Alsafar (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a metabolic condition associated with increased risk of multiple organ complications. Genetic variation such as rs5219 (KCNJ11) is shown to be linked to T2DM in many ethnic groups. The objective of this study was to investigate the possible association of this Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with the susceptibility of T2DM among Emirati population. The study included 264 unrelated diabetic patients and 153 unrelated healthy controls from Emirati population. DNA was extracted from participants' saliva samples and genotyped for the SNP rs5219 (KCNJ11) using TaqMan® real­Time PCR assays. No significant association was observed between the genotype distribution of the considered variants and T2DM. A significant association was observed between rs5219T and two anthropometric parameters, body mass index (p=0.033) and diastolic blood pressure (p=0.041) The findings demonstrate that rs5219 variant is not directly related to T2DM incidence among the UAE population. However, it can act as a risk factor that affect the disease related clinical traits.

47 M­SH3: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Room: 203009 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Labeeb Bsoul (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Chet Jablonski (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

16:00 Testing the feasibility of a Collaborative GCC DNA Database Portal to Counter Terrorism Ahmed Zayed (University of Khalifa, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) DNA Profiling and DNA Databases are a powerful tool that can be used to identify individuals that have committed crimes or terrorist attacks. The research will examine the feasibility of a collaboration between GCC countries in efforts to combat terrorism through a DNA Database Portal to share and exchange DNA Data. The feasibility study will examine the proposed DNA portal framework and apply it on the current agreements between GCC countries. The results will show that the proposed framework for the portal would fill in gap and be feasible to stand up.

16:20 Art Terms Translated into Arabic Problems and Challenges Nour Sulaiman (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Efforts were put in illustrating theoretical ground and tools in terminology to produce standardised terms. Nevertheless, this work has mainly focused on different fields like computing, automation, technology, and science overshadowing arts. Modern Arabicization has failed to contribute to pushing art terminology in the Arab world. This paper examines the problems of standardisation and Arabicization of art terminology taking ten terms from the art field for examination and analysis.

16:40 Handling Intertextuality and Cultural References in Simultaneous Interpreting Suzan Shan (Americn Uniersity of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper aims to explore the feature of intertextuality in Simultaneous Interpreting (SI) and how it was handled by a group of student interpreters at the MATI program (Master of Translation and Interpreting from English to Arabic and Vise Versa) at AUS (The American University of Sharjah). The Study included instances of intertextuality and cultural references that occurred during in­class exercises conducted by the professor, and were interpreted by the study subjects into English or Arabic depending on the Source Text (ST) handled. The results have shown that MATI students were capable of handling cultural references and intertextuality effectively especially in adopting the strategy of reformulation and explications which rendered correct and faithful simultaneous interpreting.

17:00 Public Perception of Billboard Advertising in Dubai Urwa Mohd Tariq (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Billboards, is one of the outdoor mediums profusely found and used in the United Arab Emirates. Billboards in Dubai have made great progress all these years and created its own mark compared with television, internet and print media. This medium is expensive but offers excellent branding opportunities. The location, printing resources and the idea itself sets the business apart from challengers.To the author knowledge, there has been no independent study conducted in Dubai on billboard advertisements. Moreover, public perception of billboard advertisements and its effectiveness has yet to be discovered. The main aim of my report is to study the public perception of the effectiveness of billboard ads in Dubai and explore the local market behavior towards the billboard ads.This report conducts a primary quantitative research method among Dubai respondents to critically evaluate and provide insights with respect to the effectiveness of billboard ads based on previous academic literatures

48 Tuesday, March 21

Tuesday, March 21, 08:00 ­ 09:00

Registration (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Tuesday, March 21, 09:00 ­ 09:45

Keynote 3: Emirates Mars Mission

Engr. Sara Amiri, EMM Deputy Project Manager Science Lead

Room: Auditorium­KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Tuesday, March 21, 09:45 ­ 10:00

T­CB1: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

49 Tuesday, March 21, 10:00 ­ 11:20

T­SA1: Aerospace Engineering

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Jamal Ahmad (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Kumar Shanmugam (MIST, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 Hardware­in­the­Loop Validation of Sensing and Algorithms for Satellite Navigation Mohammad Alhulayil and Ahmad Bani Younes (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Space missions require on­board sensors for computing inputs for control applications spanning orbit determination; guidance, navigation, and control; rendezvous and grappling; and determination of relative pose and angular rates. To achieve high performance Satellite applications, a detailed knowledge regarding the orientation of sensor packages relative to the core Satellite is required. An initial calibration of the sensing systems is performed on­ground to minimize the error sources in the signal processing that allows the sensor systems to recover mission critical data in real time. This work presents recent experimental work performed at Khalifa University Spacecraft Platform for Astronautic and Celestial Emulation (SPACE) Laboratory for calibrating hardware sensor platforms in an operationally relevant ground­based environment. Gaussian nonlinear differential correction is used to recover the critical system parameters.

10:20 Macro Void Formation as a Result of Permeability Variation during Resin Transfer Molding Muhammad Ali (Khalifa University of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rehan Umer and Kamran Khan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Liquid composite molding process is a cost efficient manufacturing process for fiber reinforced composites. Despite all its advantages, the process results in defective parts having micro and macro voids resulting from the uneven infusion of the resin and variations in the internal geometry of the reinforcements. Numerical modeling and simulations are extensively used for the process characterization and optimization. Here we present a numerical study to assess the void formation as a result of the permeability variation at a macro scale. Resin flow is simulated through a porous medium with two distinct regions of different permeabilities. The results show a stark difference in the flow front advancement in the two regions, creating an uneven flow. The size and formation of the void depends on the difference in the permeabilities of the two regions.

10:40 Effect of Engine Location on Flutter Speed and Frequency of Viscoelastic Wings Youssef Shaaban Matter and Tariq Darabseh (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The dynamic stability of a wing carrying an engine, and subjected to a lateral follower thrust force is investigated. In addition, quasi­steady aerodynamic forces are introduced along the wing. The wing is considered as a cantilever tapered beam, made of a viscoelastic material governed by Kelvin­Voigt model. The mass and inertia of the engine are modeled in order to achieve more realistic behavior of the engine upon divergence and flutter characteristics of the system. Moreover, the generalized function theory is used to more accurately consider the contribution of the mass and its follower force in the governing equations. The governing equations of motion are derived through the Extended Hamilton's Principle. The resulting partial differential equations are solved by Galerkin's Method along with the classical flutter investigation approach. Parametric studies highlighting the sensitivity of the engine location on the flutter speed and flutter frequency are reported.

11:00 The Energy­absorbing characteristics of Aluminum Honeycomb containing embeded carbon fiber reinforced plastic tubes Aishah Alantali, Wesley Cantwell and Rehan Umer (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, we invest the energy­absorbing features of a lightweight aluminum honeycomb holding surrounded carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) tubes. The initial test has been done for a plain aluminum honeycomb in order to illustrate its specific energy absorption (SEA) and usual failure mechanisms. Moreover, tests are then conducted on honeycomb cores reinforced with increasing numbers of composite tubes in order to establish the influence of varying the density of the tubular array on the measured SEA.

T­SB1: Energy & Fuels

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Bashar El­Khasawneh (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), John Williams (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 Computational Study of the Effect of Bluff­Body Design on Turbulent Premixed Flames Sustainability Ahmad M. AL­Naeemy (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME), Abu Dhabi, UAE); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The effect of a bluff­body, close/open base cone, on turbulent propane­air premixed­flames was investigated computationally. The CFD model coupled with energy and species was developed using ANSYS­FLUENT workbench associated with a reduced built­in kinetic mechanism of Propane­Air. The effect of the heat losses by radiation on the flame stability was examined as well. It was established from previously conducted experiments that turbulent flames 50 were affected by different factors that characterized the stabilizer structure of the flame and its properties. Results were obtained and compared to demonstrate a modeling approach of the stability of turbulent flames in the existence of a conical bluff­body with close­ versus open­base. The temperature profiles were found to examine the effect of the flame radiation loses and validate the computational results with the experimental results. In addition, the velocity profiles were obtained to compare the recirculation region as a fundamental key factor for flame sustainability

10:20 Effective Pricing of Water & Power with Different Perspectives Moza Salim Al Naimi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Strategic planning for water and electricity is one of the most important targets for any government around the world. Understanding potential changes in the wholesale pricing of electricity and water and its mechanism become a necessity for both supply and demand sides. This research focuses on addressing several price mechanisms that harmonize the interrelated sectors of water and electricity with a target to minimize the true costs for power and water. Moreover, it highlights the current Abu Dhabi electrical and water price allocation.

10:40 Hydrogen Generation Using Chemical Looping Reforming Concept Mohammed Nazeer ul Hasan Khan (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tariq Shamim (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Chemical looping Reforming (CLR) is a process of transforming the fossil fuel into a clean energy carrier, hydrogen (H2), while capturing the carbon dioxide (CO2) and minimizing the NOx emissions. In the current study, suitable OCs are identified by performing thermodynamic analysis and the best OCs are used in the system level study. The system level model was developed in Aspen Plus. A comprehensive economic assessment was also carried out to calculate the price of H2 production. The results indicate that OC with the base metal as iron (Fe) is the most suitable candidate. The thermodynamic model shows that the global efficiency (H2 and power production) of the plant, in the case of Fe and W oxides is 74.3% and 71.7%, respectively. The economic assessment indicates that the cost of H2 production is $1.64 /kg. This paper also presents the computational fluid dynamic analysis of a bubbling fluidized bed reactor.

11:00 Numerical Evaluation of a Solar Integrated CLC Plant for CO2 Capture Oghare Ogidiama (Masdar Institute, Masdar City, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tariq Shamim (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The growing concerns about global warming from fossil fuels has led to increased interest in developing efficient CO2 capture technologies. CO2 capture from fossil fuel powered plants could result in significant emissions reduction. Though available CO2 capture technologies are becoming quite mature, they result in significant energy penalty and are currently costly. Chemical looping combustion (CLC) is a relatively new method viewed as a promising CO2 capture technique that could make CO2 capture economically feasible. CLC employs an oxygen carrier circulated between two reactors for combustion of fuels using a redox reaction loop. In this study, a CLC system using solar source for heating the oxygen carrier needed for the endothermic reaction is numerical analyzed. In the study, various scenarios of solar heating are examined and the system performances under the examined scenarios are evaluated. The cost of electricity for the system was also examined.

T­SC1: Material Science

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Mohd Rezeq (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Mohammad Al Suwaidi (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 Mechanical behavior of graphene foam Shaohong Luo (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kin Liao (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The tensile behavior of graphene foam was investigated in this paper. The relationship between graphene foam density and Young's modulus and tensile strength was given and the deformation mechanism and fracture mode is studied. In addition, image processing technique was introduced to analyze the surface deformation of graphene foam under tensile loading.

10:20 Digital Rock Physics: Segmentation Comparison for a Carbonate Rock Amina Islam and Titly Farhana Faisal (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed Jouini (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed Sassi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Conventional rock physics analyses are crucial in the field of oil and gas as they allow for the characterization and management of reservoir production. Digital Rock Physics (DRP) is an emerging field that helps determine rock properties from images. The main workflow of DRP involves three steps; image acquisition, image segmentation and numerical computation. In this work, a systematic study was conducted where different segmentation techniques were applied to determine their effect on porosity and permeability values of a carbonate rock sample.

10:40 The Tectonic Evolution and Distribution Characteristics of the Formation in Jiyang Depression Jingjing Zhang (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Qinghua Chen (China University of Petroluem, P.R. China) Studies of tectonic evolution and the distribution characteristics play an directive role in the exploration and development as well as reserves prediction in this area. Based on the data from predecessors' research, and the tectonic setting, the tectonic evolution in Jiyang depression in general could be divided into the following three stages: the extrusion deformation stage in Paleozoic; fault­depression stage in Mesozoic; fracture extensional tectonic movement stage in Cenozoic. It is summarized that the distribution law of formation is partition within depression, zoning in sag; Cenozoic formation development has significant differences; Inside belt and outside belt, formation in 51 Paleogene develops significantly different in sags. Through the studies of the formation characteristics of the main oil­ rich sags, namely Dongying sag and Zhanhua sag, the main enrichment of oil and gas layers and zones are concluded, providing a guidance for further development.

11:00 Digital Rock Physics: Effect of image resolution on elastic property simulations of a carbonate rock Titly Farhana Faisal and Amina Islam (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed Jouini (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed Sassi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Digital Rock Physics (DRP) has three major steps: 1) Image acquisition using X­ray micro­CT, FIB­SEM etc., 2) Image processing and model creation and 3) numerical simulation. A Finite Element Method (FEM) was used to simulate linear, isotropic elastic properties in sandstones quite successfully but carbonate elastic property predictions remain challenging. In this paper the effect of imaging resolution on elastic property predictions for this FEM were studied. Two approaches were tested:1) through digital resampling of resolution of the same 3D image and 2) through real multi­ resolution imaging of the same region using X­ray micro­CT.

T­SD1: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Ashraf N. Al­Khateeb (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Ahmad Bani Younes (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 A numerical study on the role of conductive spacers in direct contact membrane distillation Farah Ahmed (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology & iWater, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Isam Janajreh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Raed Hashaikeh (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used to evaluate the role of highly conductive spacers on the performance of a direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) system. The numerical model assumes a 2D steady state, conjugated heat, and laminar Navier­Stokes flow. Mass flux is estimated by integrating a combined Knudsen and Poiseuille flow model. The effect of adding conductive and non­conductive spacers on temperature polarization coefficient, mass flux and thermal efficiency has been investigated at different Re numbers. Results showed that copper spacers showed better performance than polymer spacers, but a significant enhancement was not observed from the no spacer case. Only at Re 10, the copper spacer contributed to a 3% gain in TPC and a 1% gain in each mass flux and thermal efficiency of the process.

10:20 Constitutive Behavior of A Polypropylene Grade Material Used in Offshore Pipeline Danar Yurindatama (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) A non­pressurized gravity offshore intake pipeline is made from a polypropylene block copolymer and used to transport a seawater for petrochemical process plant. Recently, a few premature failures have been reported in the field. Therefore, there is a need to characterize the constitutive behavior and the failure locus of the pipe and the weld joint material. The uniaxial tensile test experiments show that the pipe material has about twice higher yield strength than the weld material and it has strain rate dependency. Based on those experiments, a simple analytical constitutive material model can be developed for finite element analysis (FEM). The failure locus is determined by a combination of FEM and an experiment of notched dumbbell specimens. Finally, the constitutive model and the failure loci for both materials are implemented in a FEM and validated by conducting a series of independent four­point bend experiment, which shows a rather good agreement.

10:40 Thermal Energy Storage Integrated to Chiller Cooling System Hilal ALquabeh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed I Ali (Masdar, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The energy requirement for cooling systems is dramatically increasing for controllable and non­controllable reasons. Thermal energy storage (TES), is a method integrated with a chiller cooling system to eliminate the leap and smoothening the fluctuations in the cooling load curve. Results show a promising energy saving conducted through introducing a cooling load for two experiment­based models with and without TES, illustrating the advantages of TES. Exergy analysis is performed to ensure the outputs of the two models

11:00 Separation of Liquid Droplets from Air Flow Using Wire­Cylinder Electrostatic Precipitator Chang Li and Mohamed Alshehhi (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tariq Khan (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Saqib Salam (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) With the development of modern industry, the separation of suspended particles from the gaseous flow becomes increasingly important. Many industrial applications need to control the concentration of fine liquid droplets in moving gaseous mediums in order to ensure the system work normally and efficiently, such as refrigeration and Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems. Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP) can be adopted for separation of fine droplets in gas, since corona discharge could charge these particles, then use of electrostatic force to implement separation and collection. Current works are mainly studying key parameters which affect separation efficiency, such as applied voltage, temperature, flow velocity and particle's size. The corona discharge ionization will be applied in this process.

52 T­SE1: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Mahmoud Rasras (Masdar Institute of Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Mihai Sanduleanu (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 Memristor­Based Multiply­ Accumulate Accelerator: A Survey Yasmin Halawani, Baker Mohammad and Mahmoud Al­Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Said Al­Sarawi (The University of Adelaide & Director of Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Australia) Memristor­based in­memory computing is gaining an increased attention as a potential candidate to overcome the traditional von Neumann bottleneck. It combines both storage and computation processes within the same physical element. The non­volatility nature of memristor analog behaviour, nano­scale size and high resistance ratio are some of its key features. Furthermore, the continuous response of memristor state variable to an applied input voltage makes it ideal candidate for multiply and accumulate operation found in many digital signal processing tasks. The crossbar architecture is inherently parallel, and can serve as an accelerator to speed­up the vector matrix operation with potential savings in energy, area and execution time. However, the presence of sneak path current, state drift and lack of conductance controllability are some of the issues hindering the adoption of memristors in large­scale networks. In this paper, an overview of a memristor­based multiply­accumulate architecture with current limitations are discussed.

10:20 Magnetic and Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting for Autonomous Bionic Systems: Opportunities and Challenges Maisam Wahbah and Baker Mohammad (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Autonomous bionic systems are ultra­low power systems with low data rate operation. Most healthcare bionic systems that are implantable in the human body utilize MEMS technology. The conventional solution of powering such systems using batteries is not practical as battery charging or replacement may not be feasible or desirable. As such, the need to explore new solutions in order to increase lifetime and achieve autonomous operation is fueling the energy scavenging research. This paper presents a study of magnetic and piezoelectric energy harvesting and their suitability for autonomous bionic systems. A study of state­of­the art magnetoelectric­piezoelectric transducers used in biomedical systems is presented. Our study revealed that integrating magnetostriction and piezoelectric effects in a single transducer significantly increases the harvested voltage by 2x and increases the total efficiency of the harvesting system. As such, integrating magnetostrictive and piezoelectric materials in energy harvesters provides a promising solution for autonomous bionic systems.

10:40 Nonlinear Acoustic Echo Cancellation using different adaptive filters Abdulqader Nael Mahmoud, Baker Mohammad and Mohammed Ismail (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Nonlinear acoustic echo cancellation is important due to the increasing use of free hand mobile phone and conferences. To improve the quality of the communication methods, many techniques have been developed recently. This paper discusses different types of adaptive filter models to eliminate nonlinear acoustic echo which are functional link adaptive filter (FLAF) model, propitiate FLAF, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD)­based sub­band adaptive filtering structure, collaborative FLAF based on RLS algorithm and variational Bayesian state­space frequency­domain adaptive filter (VB­SSFDAF) . All previous algorithms depend on the adaptive filters and to divide the signals into sub­groups signal using different techniques. These algorithms have been successfully tested to eliminate various nonlinearity echoes under different conditions and the results were assessed.

11:00 Fractional NonLinear system identification using Particle Swarm Optimization method based on key term principle Lamia Sersour (University M. Mammeri, Algeria); Tounsia Djamah (University M.Mammeri of Tizi­ Ouzou, Tizi­ Ouzou, Algeria); Maamar Bettayeb (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, identification of fractional Wiener system using particle swarm methodology is presented. It consists of a linear part followed by a static non­linear block. For this purpose the key term principle is used, and the parameters of the linear and the nonlinear part of the Wiener system as well as the fractional order are estimated. To show the efficiency of this approach, a simulation example is considered for different signal to noise ratios.

53 Tuesday, March 21, 10:00 ­ 11:00

T­SF1: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Jamal Zemerly (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Prashanth Marpu (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 Building Detection based on Segmentation in High Resolution Satellite Images Prajowal Manandhar, Zeyar Aung and Prashanth Marpu (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) We present an integrated strategy for buildings extraction in very high resolution satellite imagery of urban areas. Buildings are extracted using structural, contextual, and spectral information. First, we use One­Class support vector machine (SVM) in order to determine the man­made structures (buildings, roads, etc.) after performing segmentation based on multi­resolution and spectral difference. Next, we proceed with texture segmentation approach using a conditional threshold value to extract the buildings. And then, we use geodesic opening and closing operations to extract bright foreground objects. After this, shadows and vegetation regions are detected in these segments based on their spectral properties. Finally, we classify the buildings after removal of noises by checking for the presence of shadows along the buildings opposite to the suns azimuth direction to distinguish buildings from other bright regions. Performance evaluation of the proposed algorithm is performed on data acquired using WorldView satellite imagery over Abu Dhabi.

10:20 A Design of a Distributed Chat Application Rana Azzam and Youssef Iraqi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Distributed applications are nowadays seen in abundance due to the performance enhancements they introduce. One common architecture used for such applications is the peer­to­peer architecture. In a peer­to­peer system, multiple independent hosts cooperate together to perform a particular task without the need for a centralized server. There are several examples of distributed applications; one of which is a chat application that will be presented in this paper.

10:40 Snapchat Forensics Musaab Hasan, Zayed Balbahaith, Abdulrahman Sabbagh and Farkhund Iqbal (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Cloud computing adoption is increasing to cover massive services on the internet including social media applications.Users prefer to perform all their tasks on portable smart devices rather than using their computers. As the number of the smarts devices is increasing rapidly over the world, guidelines for performing cloud forensics should be developed to allow investigators to identify and locate the useful artifacts from cloud applications installed on the smart devices. In this research, the Snapchat was examined on Android platform and a set of proposed guidelines were presented to identify, locate, and analyze the useful artifacts that can be recovered from smart devices. These artifacts hold a detailed information about the suspect device which includes location, contacts, and activities data. The examination and testing process was conducted by performing multiple activities and taking multiple physical images for the test device then identifying the changes among them from the entire image

Tuesday, March 21, 10:00 ­ 11:20

T­SG1: Communication Engineering

Room: 203007 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Najah A. Abu Ali (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Mohamed El­Tarhuni (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 BER Analysis of NOMA­based VLC Systems Hanaa Marshoud (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Paschalis C. Sofotasios (Khalifa University & Tampere University of Technology, Finland); Sami Muhaidat (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); George K. Karagiannidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); Bayan S Sharif (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Visible light communications (VLC) systems are expected to provide remarkably high speed indoor communications and support ubiquitous connectivity. The key limitation in VLC systems is the narrow modulation bandwidth of the light sources. Non­orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been recently proposed for enhancing the spectral efficiency of indoor downlink VLC systems. In this paper, we evaluate the bit­error­rate (BER) performance of NOMA­VLC where we derive a novel closedform BER expression that explicitly takes cancellation errors and interference terms into account. The obtained analytical results are corroborated by respective results from extensive Monte Carlo simulations and are used to provide useful insights on the performance of NOMA­VLC systems.

10:20 Full­Wave THz Intrabody Bio­Electromagnetic Nano­Communication Channel Model for In­Vivo Wireless Nanosensor Networks Hadeel Elayan (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Raed Shubair (Khalifa University (KU) & Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Nawaf 54 Almoosa (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Nanosized devices operating inside the human body open up new prospects in the healthcare domain. In vivo wireless nanosensor networks (iWNSNs) will result in a plethora of applications ranging from intrabody health­monitoring to drug­delivery systems. With the development of miniature plasmonic signal sources, antennas and detectors, wireless communications among intrabody nanodevices will expectedly be enabled in the Terahertz Band (0.1­10 THz). In this paper, a rigorous channel model for intrabody communication in iWNSNs is developed. The total path loss is computed by taking into account the combined effect of the spreading of the propagating wave, molecular absorption from human tissues, as well as scattering from both small and large body particles. The overall attenuation model of intrabody THz propagation facilitates the accurate design and practical deployment of iWNSNs.

10:40 Adaptive Video Transmission Over CRNs Ala Eldin Omer, Mohamed Hassan and Mohamed El­Tarhuni (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Cognitive radio (CR) networks offer a great advantage to secondary users (SUs) by allowing them to exploit the unused spectrum of primary users (PUs) on an opportunistic basis. However, it is more challenging to deliver video services over dynamic CR channels that are available to SUs not only intermittently but with all the challenges of wireless channels. In this paper, two video streaming schemes that integrate channel allocation and scheduling algorithms with adaptive modulation and scalable source coding techniques are devised to adapt to the variations in the channel conditions and the dynamics of the SUs playback buffers. This in turn resulted in efficient usage of the available CR resources as demonstrated in the achieved PSNR of the reconstructed video streams with no interruptions in the playback process.

11:00 Impact of Carrier Frequency Offset on the Performance of Precoded OFDM Systems Fatma Kalbat (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Alexandros­Apostolos A Boulogeorgos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece); Arafat Al­Dweik and Bayan S Sharif (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); George K. Karagiannidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) Precoding is a spectrally efficient approach to improve the immunity of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in frequency­selective multipath fading channels. However, the performance of precoded OFDM (P­ OFDM) is usually evaluated under the assumption of perfect channel estimation and synchronization conditions. Therefore, the aim of this work is to evaluate the performance of P­OFDM in the presence of carrier frequency offset (CFO). The considered precoding in this work is based on the Walsh­Hadamard transform (WHT). We observe that the signal­to­interference plus noise ratio (SINR) of P­OFDM substantially changes based on the subcarrier index, which is not the case for conventional OFDM systems.

Tuesday, March 21, 10:00 ­ 11:00

T­SH1: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Room: 203009 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Katherine Hall (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Curtis Carbonell (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

10:00 The Impact of Art Exhibitions on Tourism AlAnood AlShaikh (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper addresses the impact of art exhibitions based in Dubai, particularly on tourism. Today, there is a growing demand towards the Emirate of Dubai as a cultural destination that could play an essential role in improving and generating creative sustainability in MENA and the Gulf region. The primary intent is to discuss the existed validity of the art movement in the city, as a practical approach, in motivating and developing creative entrepreneurship. As a descriptive case study, this paper reflects also the interpretation of art­displaying and creative resources in Dubai in order to maintain the role of communication within a "real­life" context for the purpose of circulating the region's creative and cultural values.

10:20 Exploring the Perceived and the Actual Written Feedback Preferences between EFL Students and Teachers in the UAE Najah Al Mohammedi (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This study aimed at exploring the perceived and the actual written feedback preferences of EFL students and teachers in the UAE. To achieve this aim a convergent parallel mixed­method research design was employed. Teachers of cycle 3 (n=67) and eleventh grade students (n=116) in public schools participated in this study. Results of the study revealed that there were more similarities than variations among the teachers and students' feedback preferences. Moreover, there were some variations among teachers' perceived preferences and their actual practices of feedback provision. Furthermore, the students' preferences aligned with their teachers actual practices. Additionally, when interviewed, teachers revealed some factors that affect the use of feedback, such as schools' orientations regarding feedback, students' proficiency and the nature of tasks and objectives. Students viewed direct correction as viable option for them but it is not necessary needed with easy and simple tasks errors.

10:40 Social Activities within Neighborhood Centers in Dubai, UAE Seyed Mohammad Hossein Alipour Yazdi and Khaled Galal Ahmed (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) As a critical branch of Social Sustainability studies, human dimensions of the urban spaces in national housing neighborhoods of Dubai is studied in this paper, by focusing on the role of "Neighborhood Centers". In another word, considering the role of the neighborhood centers, the way a neighborhood can treat the social life and well­being of its residents is discussed. The discussion is followed by an investigation aiming to figure out the extent to which the Dubai's development trend approaches the social viability and liveliness of neighborhoods, and the city's social sustainability and life quality standards in general. For this purpose, a conceptual framework consists of the principles 55 reflecting the social sustainability condition within urban spaces is prepared. Accordingly, a set of indicators are set based on which the physical and spatial attributes and characteristics of the neighborhood and its center is observed and studied, and therefore evaluated from this perspective.

Tuesday, March 21, 11:20 ­ 11:30

T­CB2: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Tuesday, March 21, 11:30 ­ 13:10

T­SA2: Chemistry and Chemical Engineering

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Georgios Karanikolos (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Emad Alhseinat (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Photocatalytic treatment of grey water and an eMBR effluent under visible radiation in the presence of oxygen and ozone Diego Toledano Garcia (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology); Giovanni Palmisano and Shadi Hasan (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Over the last decades the scientific community has invested a lot of effort in studying and explaining photocatalytic processes. One of its many uses is the rather unselective oxidation of different organic compounds present in effluents. In our study we have used 0.8% nitrogen doped TiO2 as catalyst that when activated by irradiation promotes the formation of highly oxidative radicals. One of the main features of this process is the ability to remove even trace amounts of pollutants, being extremely interesting the possibility of using photocalysis as a secondary treatment, using the effluent of a biological process as an input for the photocatalytic process. This paper studies the photocatalytic treatment of an effluent of an eMBR system under visible radiation. The photocatalytic treatment of untreated grey water under visible radiation is also targeted. In both cases the reactivity is tested in the presence of oxygen and ozone.

11:50 A Fuzzy Based Tool for Effluent Discharge Allocation into Sewer System Mohamed Ibrahim Kizhisseri (UAE University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohamed Mohamed (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper presents a Fuzzy logic based tool for allocating the effluents generated by various industrial and commercial activities into the sewer system based on the mass loadings. A Fuzzy Sewer Allocation Index (FSAI) (Range 0­100) is developed to classify the wastewater discharged from properties in Ajman, United Arab Emirates. The study mainly focused on three types of pollution, namely pH Pollution, Salt Pollution and Organic Pollution. The FSAI is developed by using Fuzzy Inference System Toolbox available in MATLAB using fuzzy rules in two steps, in which during the first step, three mass loading indices for Salt, Organic and pH pollution are developed. It is then processed in the second stage to develop the FSAI. This tool will be helpful as a decision support system to provide an outline for the plans for wastewater management based on the values of the indices developed

12:10 Development of Novel 3D printed feed spacers for flux enhancement and fouling mitigation in Reverse Osmosis and Ultrafiltration Nurshaun Sreedhar and Navya Thomas (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Oraib Al­ ketan (Masdar Inastitute of Sciense and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Reza Rowshan (New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hector Hernandez, Rashid Abu Al­ Rub and Hassan A. Arafat (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Feed spacers are a critical part of membrane processes that enhance the flux by increasing turbulence, and reduce concentration polarization. Innovative spacer designs have been proposed as a method to increase flux and reduce fouling in a membrane process. 3D printed feed spacers were designed with complex geometries that enhance the flow through the system and were tested in Reverse Osmosis and Ultrafiltration processes. The Spacers show a flux enhancement of 40 % in Brackish Water RO, and a similar 40% enhancement in organic fouling tests in UF. Biofouling tests were performed with E.Coli solution and characterized using TOC and Fluorescence Microscopy and the novel spacers showed a reduction in biofouling when compared to commercial feed spacers.

12:30 Removal of Lead from Aqueous Solutions Using Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Malaz Suliman (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Taleb Ibrahim (American university of sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Sodium lauryl sulfate modified multiwalled carbon nanotubes (SLS­MWCNTs) were synthesized, characterized and successfully used for the removal of lead from aqueous solutions. Surface characterization using energy dispersive X­ ray spectroscopy (EDS) confirmed that the surface of the raw­MWCNTs was successfully modified with the SLS. Adsorption results showed that the maximum adsorption capacity increased after modification from 3.84 to 140.70 mg/g.

12:50 Growth of Microalgae for Simultaneous Treatment of Industrial Wastewater Mohammed Abujayyab (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) 56 Phenols are among the main and most hazardous pollutants found in industrial wastewater. They are toxic and have several harmful effects to the environment and humans. Wastewater produced from chemical industries, including pesticides, pharmaceutical industries, and petroleum refineries have been reported to contain high phenols content, which has to be reduced to safe levels before release. Several biological methods have been tested to degrade phenols, mainly using bacteria, which have been seen considerable success. However, the produced biomass in this case do not have any economic value. On the other hand, by using microalgae instead, as the degrading bio­agent, the produced biomass can be then used for biofuel production. Degradation of phenols by microalgae has been reported, but the algal growth kinetics were not thoroughly covered. The aim of this work is to grow microalgae for simulation application of phenols degradation and utilizing the biomass in biodiesel production.

Tuesday, March 21, 11:30 ­ 12:50

T­SB2: Energy & Fuels (Nuclear Engineering)

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Mohamed Sassi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Tariq Shamim (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Electrical Cross­Tie Option & Issues to Cope With Extended Station Blackout Jamila Alsuwaidi (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research & Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jun Su Ha (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The electrical cross­tie option was proposed to cope with extended station blackout event (Ext­SBO) for Barakah Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) in UAE, the Emergency Diesel Generator (EDG) Cross­Tie consider a donor Unit EDG as a power source for an Ext­SBO Unit under specific conditions. The cross­tie option is discussed and the issues related to this option are generated in systematic approach as a part of dependencies between multiple units. The applied approach benefited from the previous classification of the historical occurred events as site risk that has dependencies with an enhancement of the approach by adding the operation dimension to the dependencies risk.

11:50 Assessment of the spacer effects on coolant mixing in a PWR fuel assembly Aamer Alzeyoudi (Khalifa, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The paper present a numerical investigation, using a commercial code Star­CCM+, to study the effects of grid spacers on the coolant streamwise and lateral mixing within the pressurized water reactors (PWRs). A simple design of the spacers is suggested herein, that should be simple enough to reproduce for future CFD benchmark studies but is able to mimic the main physical phenomena found in the real and full­scale assemblies. The flow conditions are of the same order of the APR1400 power plant being commissioned in the UAE. The present numerical predictions will provide the basis to build, a very much needed, more reliable correlations for the simpler single­channel codes.

12:10 Passive high­pressure safety injection of hybrid­safety injection tank Faisal Aldhaheri (Khalifa, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ho Joon Yoon (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Passive high­pressure safety injection system is developing to improve reliability of nuclear power plant during the Small Break­Loss of Coolant Accident. By connecting SIT to pressurizer via pressure balance line (PBL), the coolant of SIT can be injected to RCS regardless of high pressure of RCS. The time of pressure equilibrium between pressurizer and SIT is dependent on direct contact condensation effect at interface in SIT. Substantial amount of injected steam into SIT condenses and cannot contributes build­up of pressure. It causes long delay time of safety injection after initiating a safety operation. To verify the exact time of passive high­pressure safety injection, the code simulation has been performed and compared with existing experimental data in this study. Code simulation shows less delay time of safety injection than experimental data. The change of node number for SIT also affects the result.

12:30 Modelling of Oxide Layers on Zircalloy Fuel Pins under Subcooled Boiling Conditions Abdalla Al Hammadi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Yacine Addad (Khalifa University of Science, Technology, and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The paper present a numerical investigation, using a commercial code Star­CCM+, to study the effects of nanoporous oxide layer on the heat transfer rates at pressurized water reactor (PWR) operating conditions. Beforehand, a code ability to predict two­phase flows at subcooled regime is assessed. The initial results reveal that the code is capable of predicting such flows with a reasonably good accuracy. The finding from the present study will contribute to a better understanding of this novel proposal benefits and improvements to the current PWRs in operation.

57 Tuesday, March 21, 11:30 ­ 13:10

T­SC2: Sustainability in Built Environment

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Chung­Suk Cho (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Banu Sizirici Yildiz (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Assessment of microclimate in Abu Dhabi Neighborhoods: on the Utilization of Native Landscape in enhancing thermal comfort Maryam Almheiri (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Rapid urbanization often leads to negative environmental impacts and changes in the urban microclimates. This paper, will discuss the impacts of UHI on pedestrian comfort and reducing the number of walking trips. The main objective of this paper is to address the morphology of Emirati neighborhoods, setting a quantitative baseline by which to assess and compare spatial characteristics and microclimate performance of existing typologies in Abu Dhabi. Further, the impact of different native plants types and species in reducing UHI effects and enhancing outdoor thermal comfort. This study uses ENVI­met software, to evaluate existing conditions and generate scenarios in residential areas, with different vegetation surface, and examine their impact on surface temperatures during summer and autumn. In parallel to these simulations, field measurement will be included to calibrate the Envi­met model. A comparison of these scenarios constitutes a first step towards making recommendations about sustainable landscapes for Abu Dhabi neighborhoods.

11:50 A human­focused Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) of a low­carbon building in Abu Dhabi, UAE Juan David Barbosa and Elie Azar (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Studies in the literature typically focus on one of two objectives: saving energy or improving occupants' comfort. Building energy modeling (BEM) is used for the first objective by testing and comparing building designs while predicting their energy consumption levels. However, these studies typically fail to account for building users' interactions with building systems. The second objective ensures occupants' comfort and wellbeing using Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) methods to assess conditions provided by the building. Yet, most POE studies lack a profound analysis on their impact on the demand for energy. This paper presents an integrated POE and BEM framework that overcomes the limitations of both techniques. The framework is illustrated through a case study of low energy building in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Results indicate that 14% reduction in energy consumption can be easily achieved by improving facility management and occupants' operation patterns, without comprising occupants' wellbeing.

12:10 Investigation of Social Sustainability Design Aspects in Students' Hostels Fanan Jasim (UAE University); Khaled Galal Ahmed (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The social realm of sustainability is getting the less attention compared with the economic and environmental realms. This less concern about the social sustainability has been experienced also locally in UAE, where buildings are leaning towards adapting economically and environmentally sustainable approaches. The social variable in students' hostel as a type of buildings and micro community at the same time, is very essential. This research aims at investigating the social sustainability design aspects in students' hostels in UAE. To achieve this aim, a conceptual frame work of socially sustainable students' hostel design will be developed in order to investigate the case study of female students' hostels at UAE University. It is hoped that the findings of this research is going to help renovating the exiting hostels to be more socially sustainable and to design new students' hostels in a more socially sustainable manner.

12:30 Assessment of the Consistency among Global Precipitation Products over the United Arab Emirates Youssef R Wehbe (Masdar Institute (MI) & National Center of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Dawit Ghebreyesus (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Marouane Temimi (Masdar Institute, Tunisia); Adam Milewski (University of Georgia, USA) The objective of this study was to cross­validate and analyze the consistency of four global precipitation products from the GPCC, TRMM, WM, and CMORPH datasets over the UAE using a dense network of 53 rain gauges from 2000 to 2010. The spatial analysis of their consistency versus topography and land cover is expected to reveal the factors affecting the country's rainfall regime. The study also identifies and calibrates the best statistically performing precipitation product as an essential climatic input for monitoring, forecasting, and modeling hydrologic applications over the UAE. Statistical analyses indicate that the TMPA V7 precipitation products record the highest overall agreement with the observational network. Within the UAE, areas that receive high rainfall and fall within the vegetated highlands (e.g., >250 m), provide the most promise for incorporating satellite precipitation into hydrologic monitoring, modeling, or water resource management.

12:50 Measuring Urban Form Change in Abu Dhabi Lamis Abu Ashour (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Cities like Abu Dhabi which have not grown gradually are referred to as sudden cities because they emerged instantly and keep rapidly urbanizing. Although this rapid planned development has granted Abu Dhabi the strong admiration of other countries, it has been sometimes hasty and off­balance, overlooking crucial environmental aspects. Within this context, and given urban planning's key role in achieving sustainability goals, it is rather important to operationalize theory and to perform quantitative and multi­criteria assessments, in order to provide clear direction to future growth. this paper focuses on a comparison between two superblocks that were developed at different times in Abu Dhabi: one older one on the island itself, and a recent development in the mainland. Both share a similar land use structure and have very similar size and street layout, although their overall density and functionality differs significantly.

58 T­SD2: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Imad Barsoum (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Haris Doumanidis (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Mechanical Behaviour Of 3d Printed Cellular­Based Interpenetrating Phase Composites Ayesha AlQubaisi (Engineering Systems and Management, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Oraib Al­ ketan (Masdar Inastitute of Sciense and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rashid Abu Al­ Rub (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Interpenetrating phase composites (IPC) are novel types of 3D composites where the phases are co­continuous and interconnected in the 3D space. This study focuses on creating, 3D printing, and mechanically testing IPC structure where the hard phase takes the form of periodic cellular lattice/strut­based 3D architectures. The examined IPC cellular structure considered in this study is Reinforced Body Centered Cube (RBCC), which is a strut­ or skeletal­based periodic structure and was 3D printed using polyjet technology for different volume fractions of the reinforced phase (10~40%). Afterward, compressive mechanical properties were obtained for such cellular­IPC. The results revealed that RBCC­IPC showed an outstanding performance in terms of mechanical properties at higher volume fractions (35~40%) of the hard phase.

11:50 Bioinspired Robotic Propulsion for Automated Marine Manufacturing with Nanoheater Welding Aseel Hussien, Cesare Stefanini, Federico Renda and Haris Doumanidis (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Rebholz Claus (University of Cyprus, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Syed Jaffar (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Development of underwater infrastructure is constrained by many factors such as cost and project time. These limitations are linked to the occupational hazards faced by professional divers. This paper tries to eliminate these risks by using a bioinspired robot to electrically ignite nanoheater foils which will create welds. Commercially available Ni/Al reactive multilayers are used to join components. The nanoheaters release large amounts of heat when an exothermic reaction is initiated by an electrical stimulus. The strength of welds generated by nanofoils is increased introducing holes on the nanoheaters. In conclusion, the use of Ni/Al reactive multilayers with soft robots will contribute in the automation of underwater manufacturing and hence eliminate the occupational risks accompanied by the current technology.

12:10 Strain Node Identification For EOR Force Transducer ­ Experimental and Numerical Study Dima Ali (The Petroleum Institute University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jamal Ahmad (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Meng Fanyu (Northwestern Polytechnical University, P.R. China) The locations of the strain nodes on the extended octagonal ring (EOR) force transducer have been examined by previous works. However, there is a lack of agreement between the two most famous methods, the analytical and the numerical. Moreover, there is a lack of agreement between the different papers using numerical method. This work is done to locate the strain nodes and consequently strain gages locations, study symmetry assumption done previously, and examine the effect of the direction of vertical load application on the EOR. Experimental work to validate numerical solutions is still in progress.

12:30 Experimental and Numerical Modelling of the Low Energy Direct Contact Membrane Distillation Khadije El Kadi and Isam Janajreh (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Membrane distillation (MD) is appropriate technology for desalination, wastewater treatment, and medicinal application. Direct contact (DCMD) is the most common membrane distillation configuration due to its simplicity, high flux, and low energy demand. In this work, a high fidelity validated numerical analysis using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling is carried out to assess the performance of the DCMD. The model is validated by an experimental setup. In particular, the different flow velocity is considered. The results are demonstrated in terms of temperature profiles, temperature polarization coefficient (TPC), mass flux and thermal efficiency. At 75 ˚C operating feed temperature running at relatively high velocity (Re=100), 43% average thermal efficiency can be achieved.

12:50 Enhancing Pull­out Performance of Bonded­anchors via Bi­adhesive Interlayer: A Theoretical and Computational study Mohd Khan (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology); Jabir Ubaid (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Kumar Shanmugam (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology) Although bi­adhesive systems have been studied for automotive and aerospace structures, its suitability for bonded anchors have not yet been explored. Therefore, in this study, mechanics of stress transfer from the anchor to bi­ adhesive bondline through shear is studied via a theoretical framework. For validation, the distribution of shear stress along the bondline is compared with that of equivalent axisymmetric Finite Element (FE) models and the results are found to be in good agreement. The influence of boundary condition at the embedded­end of the anchor in the bi­ adhesive bondline is studied for various bondlength ratios. Closed form expressions for shear stress distribution are presented for anchors with homogeneous bondlines. A reduction in shear stress concentration of about 40 % can be achieved by the use of bi­adhesive bonded anchors. The theoretical solution developed can be readily used to evaluate the pull­out performance of post­installed adhesive anchors.

59 T­SE2: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Bashar Zahawi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Abdul Rahiman Beig (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Reactive Power Compensator Based on Magnetic Energy Recovery Switch Jing Yuan (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Xuliang Hou (Colorado School of Mines, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Marcelo Simões (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ahmed Al­Durra (Petrolum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); S. M. Muyeen (The Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) It is very crucial to keep the power system operate stably using reactive power regulation. Traditional reactive power compensators have some disadvantages so that they cannot be widely used in some applications. The magnetic energy recovery switch (MERS) has been proposed as a new kind of Static Var Compensator (SVC). SVC­MERS has some advantages in line frequency switching, small dc­capacitor and robustness. This paper proposes an algorithm which can compensate reactive power according to different reactive power requirement, and even for variable load, it can compensate the reactive power dynamically. At first, the fundamental control principle of MERS is discussed. The control diagram is proposed detailed and the whole system is simulated in PSIM. Final simulation results verified that the proposed device have a good performance for compensating the reactive power.

11:50 Accurate Estimation of Partial Discharge Location using Maximum Likelihood estimation for identifying uncertainties Wisal Siyam, Mamoun Abdel­Hafez and Ayman El­Hag (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, an accurate location estimation of partial discharge (PD) in an oil insulation system is discussed. The study aims at identifying disturbance and uncertainties in partial discharge localization system. Initially, an extended Kalman filter is used to estimate the PD location. The optimal filter is obtained by identifying noise statistics using maximum likelihood estimation. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is verified by comparing the estimated PD location using assumed noise covariances and the estimated PD location using estimated noise covariances.

12:10 An Improved SVPWM­Based Voltage Balancing Approach for Modular Multilevel Converter Safia Bashir and Abdul Rahiman Beig (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The emerging Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) is considered as one of the promising topologies. Balancing of the capacitor voltage of the MMC Submodules (SMs) plays a critical role for safe operation of MMC. This paper proposes a balancing approach based on space vector PWM (SVPWM). The proposed method uses only one SVPWM to generate the switching vectors for the upper arm of MMC. The switching vectors of the lower arm are obtained by finding the complement of the upper arm switching vectors, which in turn eliminates the requirement of using another SVPWM for the lower arm. It also minimizes the inner difference current that results from the voltage unbalanced between the arms. To verify the proposed method a simulation of MMC was carried out in MATLAB/ SIMULINK/SIMPOWER. The simulation results demonstrate the capability of the proposed strategy in balancing the SMs capacitors voltages and in reducing the inner difference current.

12:30 Analytical Synthesis of High­Order Low­Pass Filter Using Differential Difference Current Conveyor for Multi­Standard Receivers Sana A Alshwaikh (University of Ajman, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Soliman Mahmoud (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper presents analytical synthesis of the transfer function as new technique for realizing high order filters, by translating equations into active blocks. A 4th order low pass filter (LPF) was designed using this technique and using the differential difference current conveyor (DDCC) as its active block. The proposed filter was used in the baseband of the multi­standard receivers, with different cutoff frequencies to support different standards. LT Spice simulation results are presented using 90nm technology, with ±0.5V supply. This filter has a total power consumption of 1mW and a DC gain of ­1 dB

12:50 Fractional Hammerstein system identification based on two decomposition principles Hammar Karima (University Mouloud Mammeri, Algeria); Tounsia Djamah (University M.Mammeri of Tizi­Ouzou, Tizi­ Ouzou, Algeria); Maamar Bettayeb (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper deals with identification of fractional non­linear systems; Hammerstein Controlled Auto­Regression (HCAR) models are considered. Different identification models can be derived for fractional HCAR system based on identification principles such as the Over­parametrization principle and the Key­term separation principle. The Levenberg­Marquardt algorithm combined with each of these principles is used to identify the fractional HCAR system. Various simulations test the efficiency of the optimization method based on these principles.

60 T­SF2: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Huwida E Said (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Chan Yeob Yeun (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Enhanced Network Forensic Framework and tools Maryam AlYammahi, Naeema AlMansoori and Farkhund Iqbal (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Without a doubt, cyberspace has many countless benefits since most of our activities are online. Ever since the dawn of cyberspace, the cyber­attacks have been emerged. Unlike tradition crimes, cybercrimes make the investigation processes very difficult for the investigators, since the criminals' identity can be hidden or fraud. As a result, the forensics science has been expanded to the network to provide the evidence of the criminal activity. Also, it enhances the network security using the collected information. Until now most of the proposed network forensics frameworks are struggling in determining the methodology of collecting, preserving, and analyzing data. Therefore, this paper aims to propose an enhanced framework for network forensics to assist the network security and the ability to prove the criminal activity besides helping investigators to analyze data for investigation purposes by using free of cost tools.

11:50 Distance­Preserving Hashing Techniques Abdelrahman AlMahmoud (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Privacy requirements and the need for collaborative analysis has motivated a significant amount of research on anonymization techniques and privacy­aware analysis. Anonymization techniques are typically applied to data in order to preserve certain distances and properties of the original data points without revealing compromising information about it. A popular family of approaches in this field are distance­preserving hashes. These techniques allow data owners to share private information safely while retaining properties that enable analytics. However, typical anonymization techniques require a lot of expertise and domain knowledge in order to be applied effectively because they alter certain properties of the data. In this paper we discuss the types of distance­preserving hashing in order to give insight on how they operate.

12:10 Cloud Forensics: Process Misbehaviour Detection using Finite State Log Analyzer Sameera Almulla (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, we present a Forensic Finite State Log Analyzer (FFSLA) framework to analyze cloud based web service composition process behaviors and classify the normal from non­conventional attack behavior. Also, we will discuss preliminary results of the proposed framework tests and evaluation. Stakeholders may consider the proposed framework to redesign business process execution in order to mitigate risks associated with process misbehavior.

12:30 FLUKES: Automated log threat extractor tool Hesham Shaif (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Monther Aldwairi (Zayed University & Jordan University of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Unstructured server logs datasets are increasing geometrically. The complexity in processing and analyzing threats poses a challenge to security data experts and research community. This paper proposes intelligent data abstraction technique, called FLUKES, to process unstructured server logs and generate a visualization of the attack threat using opensource D3.js modules. FLUKES has been tested experimentally with server log events, specifically FTP server logs, and produced a new signature pattern of Brute­force attack. FLUKES accepts input log files in the format of .JSON and .CSV, and generates representation summary, which is processed and visualized throw a programmable dashboard. The ultimate outcome is to forensically correlate then visualize logs and detect threats of successful access into the network without altering the original log evidence.

12:50 Advanced forensics file carving framework for fragmented video files Khawla Alghafli (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ernesto Damiani (Universita’ degli Studi di Milano, Italy); Chan Yeob Yeun (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In digital forensics, file carving of video files is an important process to recover evidence of several criminal cases. The traditional carving techniques recover video files based on their file structure. However, these techniques fail in the cases if the file is split into several fragments over storage media and some of its parts were overwritten. In this paper, we present an overview of an advanced forensics video file carving framework to recover and reassemble fragmented video files into playable video files. We provide experimental results showing that the video can be recovered based on the proposed framework. The overall accuracy rate can produce forensically sound evidence and play a critical role in the process of recovery of digital evidence in many criminal cases.

61 Tuesday, March 21, 11:30 ­ 12:50

T­SG2: Communication Engineering

Room: 203007 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Mohamed El­Tarhuni (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Najah A. Abu Ali (UAEU, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Performance of Differential Modulation Under I/Q Imbalance Bassant Selim (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The present paper investigates the effects of in­phase/quadrature­phase imbalance (IQI), which are known to degrade the performance of wireless communication systems. Specifically, we evaluate the effects of IQI on the bit error rate (BER) performance of differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) for ideal receiver (RX) with transmitter (TX) IQI, ideal TX with RX IQI and joint TX/RX IQI. Explicit analytic expressions are derived for the BER of single­carrier systems suffering from IQI at the TX and/or RX. Extensive Monte­Carlo simulation offered analytic results which show that realistic TX/RX IQI impairments can degrade the corresponding BER by over 12%. Likewise, it is shown that the detrimental effects of IQI are more considerable on DQPSK than on QPSK.

11:50 Blind Channel Estimation Technique for OFDM Systems Lina Bariah (KUSTAR, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Sami Muhaidat (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Arafat Dweik (KUSTAR, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This work introduces an efficient blind channel estimation technique using a hybrid frame structure for OFDM systems. In particular, the hybrid frame contains Amplitude shift keying (ASK), phase shift keying (PSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulated symbols, where the ASK carriers are considered as data carriers as well as pilots, which enhances the spectral efficiency. Closed­form expression for the symbol error rate was derived and the results are corroborated by respective results from Monte Carlo simulations.

12:10 Routing Protocols in Urban VANET Maha Kadadha (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hadi Otrok (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE) & CIISE, Concordia University, Canada); Hassan Barada (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mahmoud Al­ Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Yousof Al­Hammadi (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Increasing attention has been drawn to the development of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITSs) to realize the smart city vision. ITSs are expected to improve drivers' experience and safety in smart cities. Vehicular ad hoc networks, VANETs, are considered the building block as they connect between the system components; vehicles, Road Side Units (RSUs), traffic lights and management units. Connectivity is a major limitation in VANETs as it highly affects the system's performance due to the various challenges in the urban environment. In this paper, the basic routing protocols are presented to understand how routing is done. State of the art urban routing and clustering protocols are then surveyed to understand their impact on connectivity of urban VANETs. Open challenges to the network performance are summarized and possible solutions are proposed to overcome these challenges.

12:30 Millimeter­Wave Communications for Future 5G Cellular Systems: An Overview Fatimah Al­Ogaili (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The vast amount of spectrum available at the underutilized millimeter­wave (mmWave) band enables drastic increase in broadband cellular communication capacity and is considered as a key solution for future 5G mobile communications. Millimeter wave, ranging between 30 and 300 GHz, provides a solution for the bottleneck problem in the current cellular allocations, by offering orders of magnitude increase in the spectrum. This paper discusses the characteristics of the mmWave propagation channel, and highlights the main challenges associated with the use of mmWaves. The paper also outline the channel models proposed for mmWave communications. Beamforming techniques for millimeter wave communication are also described. Having an insight of the propagation environment is an essential requirement for developing future mmWave mobile systems.

Tuesday, March 21, 11:30 ­ 12:30

T­SH2: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Room: 203009 (New Ext. ­ 3rd Floor) Chairs: Barry Lin (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Katherine Hall (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

11:30 Happiness and Positivity at the Workplace Athijah Al Mujairdi (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The concept of Happiness and Positivity on an organizational level has witnessed a major shift. Being known for pursuing best practice, the UAE federal government has explored this concept and made it a reality through several initiatives to promote employee well being at work. This case study specifically explores an application of the Happiness & Positivity Survey from an internal communication perspective, highlighting the core opportunities and strategies implemented to ensure the successful implementation in a federal entity.

62 11:50 Kindergarten English teachers' perceptions of teaching listening strategies, assessment strategies and the obstacles they face Ghada Alkilani (United Arab Emirates University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The focus of this study is ADEC kindergarten English teachers perceptions of teaching listening strategies used to help English Learners, the aim of this study is to identify the tools and approaches involved in delivering these strategies and the forms of assessment in children's listening comprehension, along with determining possible challenges and obstacles facing kindergarten teachers while applying these strategies in their classrooms. Structured questionnaire was used as an instrument in collecting the required data from target sample of participant. The results generated revealed that best strategies commonly used were incorporated songs and clapping as attention­getting signals, in addition to performing body movement as reaction to simple instructions given by teachers. Commonly used assessments were mainly observations of children to check their listening comprehension and their level of following instructions. Finally, the results demonstrated that those kindergarten students who had not previously been exposed to English communication faced difficulties

12:10 Evidence Admissibility in Commercial Arbitration: Systemizing the Approach Ahmad Alozn and Abdulla Galadari (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology) Contracts are designed to govern the relations between business partners, allocate risk among them, and resolve conflicts that might arise during the course of the contract. Of course, a contract cannot resolve all conflicts as it cannot predict every possible scenario and hence, dispute resolution mechanisms have been developed to assist. Arbitration, among these mechanisms, is considered the most efficient legally binding dispute resolution mechanism. Arbitration efficiency is nothing, but an agreed flexibility in the applied rules and procedures. Among this flexibility, arbitration rules of evidence admissibility that are very much decided by the arbitral tribunal. This paper reviews the famous arbitration rules in an attempt to find common grounds with respect to evidence admissibility. It further proposes a framework to unify the approach of assessing evidence admissibility by the arbitral tribunal.

Tuesday, March 21, 13:10 ­ 14:00

T­L: Lunch Break (KU New Extension ­ Student Hubb (Ground Floor))

Tuesday, March 21, 14:00 ­ 15:40

T­SA3: Micro/Nano Devices

Room: 202004 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Ammar Nayfeh (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Mohammad Alhawari (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Spintronic Devices in Biological Applications Tamador Elboshra Alkhidir, Deborah Gater and Abdel F. Isakovic (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) There is a space for more extensive adoption of spintronic devices in biological applications. Giant magnetoresistance spintronic devices, for example, can act as magnetic sensors for metallic labeled substances. This can promote detection and manipulation of biological cells. Promising applications for spintronics are not limited to inorganic material as new investigations have shown the possibilities of using organic material as spintronic polarizers. In this paper, we give a general overview about inorganic and organic spintronic applications, and describe futuristic trends.

14:20 3­nm­Thick ZnO Nano­islands Charge Trapping Layer for Memory Devices Grown by Single ALD Step Nazek El Atab (Masdar Institute Of Science And Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ammar Nayfeh (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this work, 3­nm­thick Zinc­Oxide (ZnO) nano­islands are deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD). UV­Vis­NIR and XPS measurements show that the nanostructures show quantum confinement effects in 1D where the bandgap is increased and the electron affinity is reduced. In addition, non­volatile MOS memory devices with ZnO nano­islands trapping layer are studied are fabricated by a single ALD step and analyzed using high­frequency C­V measurements. The devices showed a large memory window at low operating voltages with excellent retention and endurance characteristics due to the additional oxygen vacancies in the nano­islands and the deep barrier for the trapped holes due to the reduction in ZnO electron affinity. The results prove that the ZnO nano­islands are promising in future low power memory applications.

14:40 Cytotoxicity of Nanoparticles and Carbon Nanotubes: Implications and Avenues of Characterization Nicholas Hallfors (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Nanomaterials are a class of materials with dimensions on the nanometer scale. Nanomaterials are attracting great interest for applications in medicine, electronics and energy, among other fields. As they become more popular and more widely produced, it will be important to better understand the interaction between living tissue and nanomaterials. This paper reviews several recent studies on safety and biocompatibility of nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes. It is observed that many materials described as inert or biocompatible on a macro­scale setting may not be as safe at the nano­scale. From these observations, some preliminary decisions can be made on the future of certain nanomaterials.

63 15:00 Design Optimization of Silicon­on­Insulator Single and Double Slot Waveguides Krishna Twayana (Masdar Institute, Nepal); Paulo Moreira and Marcus Dahlem (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Single and double slot waveguides based on a silicon­on­insulator platform were numerically studied using full­ vectorial finite difference eigenmode solver.The spatial E­field profile and distribution at the waveguide cross­section were determined for the fundamental TE mode at 1.55 μm wavelength. The power confinement factor and the average normalized intensity inside the slot region were investigated as a function of the slot and slab widths. For the single slot waveguide, the slot and slab widths were varied from 10 nm to 250 nm and from 100 nm to 250nm, respectively. For the dual slot waveguide, the central slab was varied from 50 nm to 250 nm.

15:20 Experimental study of the two phase (air/water) flow in a micro­Venturi Vishnu Bhadran (Emirates Aviation University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Afshin Goharzadeh (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Omar Chafic (Emirates Aviation University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper presents an experimental study on a two­phase air­water flow in a micro­Venturi channel. The influence of the flow control parameters such as water pressure and air flow rate, on the controlled generation of micro­bubbles, are investigated. Experiments were conducted in a transparent micro­Venturi channel having a depth of 40 µm. When the inlet flow control parameters were varied, significant changes were observed on the microbubble velocity, size and frequency. Image analysis, focused on vena contracta, showed that the velocity of generated microbubbles decrease suddenly to reach a constant value of 0.25 m/s. The bubble area is measured, having a constant value in time even if its shape is changed. Bubble size depend strongly on air mass flow rate. For different inlet flow parameters, the bubble frequency is increasing linearly with respect to the increasing air mass flow rates.

T­SB3: Robotics & Autonomous Systems

Room: 202006 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chair: Khalid Alhammadi (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 A Simulation Environment for a Magnetically Actuated Capsule Endoscopy Yasmeen Abu­Kheil (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Lakmal Seneviratne (KURI, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jorge Dias (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, an augmented human­machine interface and a virtual simulator for magnetically actuated endoscopic capsules are proposed. The interface provides the operator with two types of feedback information: (i) 3D visual information feedback through a 3D reconstructed map and (ii) 3D pseudo force feedback through a haptic device. The proposed simulation environment allows visual and haptic control strategies for capsule constrained motion in image coordinates. The virtual simulation environment also offers both off­line training for medical doctors and a testing platform for researchers.

14:20 Nonlinear Estimation for Calibration of 3PRR Planar Parallel Kinematics Manipulator Abdur Rosyid, Bashar El­Khasawneh and Anas Alazzam (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Calibration is a common procedure to increase the accuracy of machine tools. Estimation as an important part of the calibration has been conducted by using various algorithms. This paper presents the implementation of nonlinear least squares (Gaussian least squares differential correction) algorithm to estimate the geometrical parameters of 3PRR planar parallel kinematics manipulator having nonlinear kinematics which can be used in a hybrid serial­parallel kinematics machine tool. The independent parameters are first estimated followed by the dependent parameters. The convergence to the true values with zero estimation error is guaranteed with any initial estimates provided that no measurement noise is introduced. Subsequently, the estimation by incorporating noise from all measurement devices is conducted which gives the estimates with certain estimation errors. It is shown that larger size of measurement samples increases the estimation accuracy. Finally, the uncertainty of the estimates is evaluated by using Monte Carlo simulation.

14:40 Vision marker based Multi UAV Collaborative Aerial Manipulation Abdullah Mohiuddin (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Dongming Gan (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tarek Taha (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Multi­UAV collaborative manipulation in outdoor environments, especially in absence of accurate position esti­ mation mechanisms, brings forth challenges such as dynamic stability, control techniques and algorithms of collaboration. The proposed work is an attempt to develop such an algorithm for collaboration with the help of an open source physics engine GAZEBO, where in, a previously developed simulation platform RotorS is used to simulate Hex­rotors. Multilink arms with alternating joint axes with zero damping are used to simulate a cable attached with the Hex­rotors. A magnetic gripper is attached to the cable as endeffector and a node is developed already, demonstrating the hardcoded picking, transportation and dropping of the payload.A comparison is performed amongst mechanical coupling, vision marker based method and the perfect position estimation method for collaborative aerial manipulation.

15:00 Decision Making with Multi­agent in Search and Rescue A Multi­Objective POMDP Approach Hend Al Tair, Tarek Taha, Jorge Dias and Mahmoud Al­Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper we propose a method to reinforce preference of objectives using the reward function of a Multi­Objectives Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (MOPOMDP). The technique is applied in context of search and rescue that involves heterogeneous team with multi­objective with potential conflicting­objectives situations. It ensures that a high­priority preferences get high accumulative rewards, solve ambiguities and it can be conducted before the low­

64 priority­preference. We used existing POMDP solver to solve the problem. The algorithm has been tested for a 50 test case to show its effectiveness

15:20 Cord Grounding Unit (CGU): A Novel Design for Energy­Efficient Unidirectional Selective­Self­Locking Mechanism Mohammad Awad (Khalifa University of Science Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Dongming Gan (Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Jorge Dias (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Lakmal Seneviratne (KURI, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) In this paper, the Cord Grounding Unit (CGU) mechanism is presented. CGU is a novel design for energy efficient unidirectional selective self­locking mechanism. The novelty lies in the design and functionality of the CGU. The CGU is consisted of a cam­cleat, which is retracted away from the cord motion space by a leaf spring. When locking is required, a linear solenoid actuator pushes the cam­cleat towards the moving cord. The engagement between the cam­cleat and the moving cord will move the cam­cleat towards its space­eliminating region, this will block the motion of the cord creating a new grounding point. The application of CGU in robotics can vary from safety to stiffness altering depending on the intended application. Energy efficiency is guaranteed due to short actuation time of the linear solenoid (single second) as the locking process is passively occurring through the engagement between the moving cord and the cam cleat.

T­SC3: Industrial Engineering

Room: 202021 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Maher Maalouf (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Raja Jayaraman (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Technological Innovation Classification and Mapping­ A literature review, and Mapping Models Alaa Ubaid, Mustafa Sahban, Oussama Hammad and Ayman Ramadan (University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Refaat Abdel­Razek (University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Organizations and entrepreneurs used mapping models to map the innovation, identify the dominant types of innovations, anticipate unused areas to innovate in it, and assist in identifying the current innovation patterns. The available mapping models were shortfall in covering all innovation dimension as well as in covering the new challenges rise with sustainability issues in industry. In this work, literature review conducted to identify the types of innovations available in the literature and summarize it, highlight the importance of considering innovation for sustainability, and identify the gaps and criticisms on the current mapping models. New mapping models proposed. The proposed models were able to cover the main innovation types, i.e. 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D, and adding sustainability attributes to the mapping of innovation. Future work could be, embedding innovation models, i.e. technology push, market pull, coupling model, interactive model, and network model, in the mapping models.

14:20 Chain­wide Optimization of Procurement, Production, and Dispatching Decisions Under Consignment Stock Partnership Osama Alkhatib and Rami As'ad (American University of Sharjah ­ UAE, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Moncer Hariga (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper seeks to jointly optimize the operational decisions associated with raw material procurement, production lot sizing as well as finished product dispatching for a two layer supply chain comprised of a single­vendor and a single­ buyer. As per the just­in­time replenishment policy, a raw material quantity enough to cover exactly the production during one cycle is ordered at the beginning of each production cycle. In this paper, however, a more general raw material replenishment schedule is considered wherein multiple raw material shipments may take place within one cycle, referred to as multi­to­one (MTO) policy, or alternatively a single shipment that covers the production for multiple cycles, referred to as one­to­multi (OTM) policy, may rather be adopted depending on whichever is optimal. The aforementioned decisions are simultaneously optimized through mathematical models that embrace the integer multiplier of the cycle time policy.

14:40 Achieving Sustainable Transportation Goals for Abu Dhabi: A Study of Public Transit Use Praveen Maghelal (Masdar Institute, India); Mayada Almardood (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Abu Dhabi, capital city of United Arab Emirates, is an emerging global city. As part of its identity, the city aims to provide world class facilities and services in the region, including a good network of public transportation. Understanding the transit user perception will provide service recommendations and help identifying the trip characteristics, travel behavior and perceptions that can enhance current transit system and provide future recommendations for effective transit network. Due to the lack of information about the patterns of transit use by individuals in Abu Dhabi City, this study uses the transit user stated preference survey to examine the trip characteristics; travel behavior; perception of quality of service, social network and personal characteristics of transit users of Abu Dhabi. The analysis of respondents provides insights into the housing development, transit service enhancement and creating transit­oriented development within walkable distance of transit stops.

15:00 Multiple Plants Capacitated Lot Sizing and Scheduling With Sequence­Dependent Setup Costs Sari Abdullah, Abdulrahim Shamayleh and Malick Ndiaye (American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Production planning is a crucial activity for companies to satisfy customers demand while minimizing cost. The objective of this research is to optimize the production planning and scheduling decisions of companies in 65 petrochemical industry field. A Mixed­Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is developed for the capacitated lot sizing and scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup costs where changeover cost occurs when changing the production from one grade to another. The model considers the chain of multiple suppliers, affiliates, warehouses, and customers. It provides answers to questions regarding the amount of each raw material to be purchased from each supplier, the sequence of production plans, inventory levels, and warehouse selection to satisfy orders. The problem under study is considered an NP­Hard problem due to its complexity and size; therefore, a three stage heuristic was developed which provided good quality solutions with a range of 0.09% ­ 2.0% away from optimality.

15:20 Predicting Accessibility:A Hierarchical Additive Approach Anoud Alqahtani (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Praveen Maghelal (Masdar Institute, India) Accessibility, as a conceptual and operational definition, has gone through several iterations. However, it still remains as an often misunderstood and poorly defined and measured construct. In general, it is understood that accessibility is a measure of spatial distribution of potential destinations, the ease of reaching these destination (individually or collectively) and the magnitude, character, and quality of various activities existing in that particular geography. Currently, four perspectives of measuring accessibility exists: Infrastructure­based, location­based, person­based and utility based. Location­based accessibility is the most commonly used measure because it is easier to access since it is less data intensive and easy for researchers to communicate and comprehend the implications. Masdar city, when developed as planned, will consists of several types of sustainable transportation options including walking, biking, personal rapid transit, group rapid transit, bus/light rapid transit and metro. The planned city is divided into grids of 400m using the contour approach.

T­SD3: Mechanical Engineering

Room: 202022 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Imad Barsoum (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Mohamed Sassi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Application of the POD Method for Damaged Detection in Cracked Rotor Systems Ayesha Al Mehairi (KUSTAR, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Adnan Saeed (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Shadi Balawi (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammad Alshudeifat (Khalifa Universiy, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Unusual vibration levels in rotating equipment usually result from unbalance, misalignment, mechanical loose­ ness, propagating cracks and other sources of malfunctions. Appearance of these damages often excites destructive vibration amplitudes in rotor systems. Here, we focus on the induced vibration by propagating cracks in a rotating shaft. Detecting crack in its early phase of propagation might help in preventing further damage in the equipment as well as avoiding economic and human losses. The proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is employed here as a crack detection technique for early damage detection and to identify the vibration signature of the cracked rotor response.

14:20 Computational Modelling of Anode Baking Furnace (ABF) Performance Abdul Raouf Tajik (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Tariq Shamim (Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mouna Zaidani and Rashid Abu Al­Rub (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Anode baking is a critical step in production good quality of carbon anodes which are needed for aluminum production. The operational and geometrical parameters have significant influence on the anode baking furnace (ABF) performance and the resulting carbon anode quality. Numerical modelling is an imperative tool to investigate the effect of different parameters on the anode baking process. This study provides an overview of two different approaches employed in ABF modelling namely process modelling, and design modelling. Using process modelling, in a simplified manner, effect of several operational parameters on anode baking process are investigated. ABF design modelling concentrates on effect of different furnace design on baking process.

14:40 Finite Element Analysis of a Pressure Vessel Subjected to Internal Blast Loading Sadiq Lawal, Imad Barsoum and Rodney Simmons (The Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The current numerical study was necessitated because of a non­injury­producing incident which occurred in a laboratory, where an autoclave exploded during an experiment titled: "Autoclave­Assisted Thermal Decomposition of Ammonium Tetrathiomolybdate and Carbon Nano Tubes Impregnation". The explosion was believed to have occurred because dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was used in excess in the experiment and heated beyond its decomposition temperature. The aim of this current study therefore, is to investigate the effect of internal blast load on a pressure vessel made of stainless steel AISI 316L through finite element analysis. Numerical simulation using FEA was performed to better understand the true cause of failure of the pressure vessel. The result of the finite element­based analysis that reasonably predicts the structural response and subsequent failure of the pressure vessel that was observed in the post­incident investigation was presented.

15:00 Development of a Backward Whirl Based Damage Detection Technique in Rotor Systems Hanan Al Hosani (R&D Engineer at ETiC, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Adnan Saeed (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Mohammad Alshudeifat (Khalifa Universiy, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Shadi Balawi (Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Studying the dynamic behavior of cracked rotor systems has gained great interest in the literature. The extensive applications of heavy­duty rotor dynamic systems in different industrial and aerospace rotating equipment could lead to crack catastrophic crack­based damages. Early detection of cracks in a cracked rotor in engineering practice is of 66 significant importance to the safety, reliability and durability of large rotating machinery in service. The proposed backward­whirl approach could help in detecting early crack damages in rotor system, by identifying a unique crack signature based on backward whirling analysis.

15:20 Trickle Bed Reactor Operational Mode Characterization ­ Pressure Fluctuation Analysis Amena Hasan (Masdar Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Shahid Rabbani and Mohamed Sassi (Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Trickle Bed Reactors used in the industry are significant to many processes. Understanding the hydrodynamics of the reactor allows a more efficient design and operation of the reactor. A smart sensor can provide a deeper knowledge of the operation in a reactor. This work investigates the flow regime and structure by analyzing the pressure fluctuation in the reactor. The method used involves using COMSOL as a software simulation. The simulation applies the Level Set Method and will track locally the wettability and pressure fluctuation. Eventually this data is to be validated with the smart sensor, hence the data to be measured by the smart sensors will provide a direct implication based on the analysis in this work.

T­SE3: Electrical & Electronic Engineering

Room: 202023 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chairs: Tarek El Fouly (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)), Bashar Zahawi (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Frequency Domain Analysis of a Guyed Tower Subjected to a Lightning Strike Andri Haryono, Noureddine Harid and Huw Griffiths (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper reports the simulation results of a guyed­wire telecommunication tower located in a high flash density region and subjected to lightning strikes. This study is a response to incidents which occurred within few guyed towers in several locations in the region, and which resulted in severe damage to the electronics connected to the tower. This study intends to develop new protection measures for the guyed tower. The aim is to elucidate the possible reasons that led to such damage and recommend protection measures to improve LPS performance. Frequency­domain computations are carried out using frequencies representative of the typical lightning current. Hybrid approach is used to compute the GPR at the surface of conductors and inductively induced potentials and currents on adjacent coaxial cable. The results show that, large potential differences in excess of the maximum withstand level of the insulation may occur between the cable core and sheath.

14:20 Preliminary soil resistivity measurements for assessment of non­linear effects of current magnitude and frequency Mohammed Abu Geyab, Huw Griffiths and Noureddine Harid (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Commercial earth resistivity test equipment have relatively narrow ranges of test frequency and magnitude of the injected current. A research program has been initiated to investigate the effect of varying the frequency and magnitude of the injected current on the measured apparent resistivity. Firstly, a conventional 'roll­along' soil resistivity survey was carried out over 6 survey lines at a designated test site at the Petroleum Institute using an ABEM Terrameter LS. A '2.5D' visual model was generated using VOXLER software. The results are analyzed and indicate clearly the presence of the water table. The proposed future work consisting of a systematic field test investigation into the effects of varying current magnitude and frequency is described and the associated computer simulations using numerical­based grounding software. The work is expected to lead to recommendations on optimized test parameters for commercial soil resistivity testers possible alternative improved test setups/techniques.

14:40 An Alternative Measurement Approach to Sweep Frequency Response Analysis (SFRA) for Power Transformers Fault Diagnosis Abdulla Hammoud (The Petroleum Institute & The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) The power transformer is an expensive component in the power network and its failure can lead to power outages and significant financial loss, particularly at higher voltage levels. Frequency response analysis (FRA) is a recommended technique to diagnose transformer faults and particularly so for detecting mechanical displacements in windings and core. However, due to the complex way in which transformer electric parameters (inductance, capacitance, and resistance) are affected by such distortion, challenges remain in the correlation of FRA signature and fault type. Furthermore, FRA is influenced significantly by the adopted measurement method and practical test setup. This paper aims to investigate FRA responses of small laboratory test transformers measured using a standard 'IEEE' recommended method and with a proposed new generic test setup having additional current measurement points and using precision lock­in amplifiers. The paper also presents results showing the effect of change in the magnitude of applied voltage levels.

15:00 Surface Discharge Detection using UHF Method Alaa Atef (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Huw Griffiths and Noureddine Harid (Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Reliable operation of high­voltage power system equipment depends on the integrity of its insulation. During operation, the insulation is exposed to electrical, thermal, chemical and mechanical stresses. Electrical stress is the main factor. This occurs as partial discharges (PD) generated as a result of high electric field stress. Monitoring the insulation of electrical equipment in the high­voltage system is essential for maintenance purposes and for improving the reliability of the system. In this paper, an experimental study on the characteristics of surface discharge is presented. A test set­up using a solid dielectric sample in a point­plane configuration was used to generate surface PD and the effect of voltage amplitude are examined. The results are analyzed using signal processing. Also, the electromagnetic fields radiated by this type of discharge were computed using the FDTD method. These may help in evaluating the sensor characteristics required for detecting surface discharges in practice. 67 15:20 PDE Based Model of Artificial Gas Lift Dynamics Ibrahim AbuShawish (The Petroleum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Igor Boiko and Ahmed Al­Durra (Petrolum Institute, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) A new model to describe the dynamics of the artificial gas lift systems based on PDEs, fluid equations of state and the plastic bag method of discretizing the PDEs with respect to time and space is proposed. This model shows high fidelity and accurate results in comparison to the Original Plastic Bag model due to its ability to properly and accurately describe the behavior of oil and gas based on well­known correlations that define their properties. Operating points map is present to show the behavior of the oil and gas in the AGL systems. Comparison between the proposed model and the Original Plastic Bag model is shown.

Tuesday, March 21, 14:00 ­ 15:00

T­SF3: Computer and Information Systems

Room: 202024 (New Ext. ­ 2nd Floor) Chair: Haseena AlKatheeri (Zayed University, United Arab Emirates (UAE))

14:00 Lightweight Security Protocol for A Biosensor Hussam Al­Hamadi (Khalifa University & Information Security Research Center, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Amjad Gawanmeh and Mahmoud Al­Qutayri (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) Security is one of the major challenges that affect the deployment of the biosensors that form WBSNs. The implementation of any security protocol comes along with the additional overhead of an extra power consumption from the limited resources of devices like biosensors. Nevertheless, the additional security operations may come with a delay that affects the real­time objective of the biosensors application. In this paper, a lightweight security protocol is presented to secure the medical information which is transmitted from the biosensor to the gateway. The proposed security protocol relies on a counter method at the biosensor side to save the biosensor's power. The security protocol shouldn't include unnecessary computational processes to has an acceptable cost of computational delay. Therefore, the performance of the proposed protocol is compared with that of other existing techniques.

14:20 Survey of Incentive Mechanisms for Crowd Sensing Ahmed Suliman (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Hadi Otrok (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE) & CIISE, Concordia University, Canada) With the wide spread of smart phones, the paradigm of crowd sensing is gaining immense popularity. Crowd sensing is the act of collecting certain kind of data from people in a specific area of interest. Since the users involved in this activity incur a cost for performing the task, i.e. the cost of uploading the data or the energy to sense, they need to be compensated for their work or else they will not be inclined to participate in the sensing task. Many papers have been published related to user selection and incentive mechanisms in crowd sensing. In this paper we review a range of approaches proposed in both areas, provide comparison between them and outline areas for future work.

14:40 Automatic arabic Text Summarization Based on Noun Extraction Lamees Al Qassem and Hassan Barada (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Di Wang (Khalifa University & EBTIC, United Arab Emirates (UAE)); Ahmad Al­rubaie and Nawaf Almoosa (Khalifa University, United Arab Emirates (UAE)) This paper focuses on discussing the challenges faced in summarizing Arabic documents and the literature in this field, which is fairly limited and very recent. The reviewed systems are classified based on the methodology followed in building the system. Finally, a new system architecture is proposed and discussed. The system relies on the extracting nouns and clustering them based on their semantic.

Tuesday, March 21, 16:00 ­ 16:15

T­CB3: Coffee Break (Conference Reception)

Auditorium Lobby ­ KU New Extension (Ground Floor)

Tuesday, March 21, 16:15 ­ 16:45

T­BP: Best Paper Awards & Closing Ceremony

Room: Auditorium­KU New Extension (Ground Floor) EDAS at 172.30.1.223 (Tue, 14 Mar 2017 12:31:25 ­0400 EDT) [User 145265 using Win7:Chrome 56.0 cached 0.620/2.675 s] Request help

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Author-Session Index

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Author Session Al Jasmi, Fatma M-SG2.3 A Al Jezawi, Nesreen M-SG1.2 Abdel Jabbar, Nabil M-SA3.4 Al Maharmeh, Hamza M-SE2.4 Abdel-Hafez, Mamoun T-SE2.2 M-SE3.3 Abdel-Raouf Ahmed, Khaled M-SG3.3 Al Mehairi, Ayesha T-SD3.1 Abdel-Razek, Refaat T-SC3.1 Al Mohammedi, Najah T-SH1.2 Abdullah, Sari T-SC3.5 Al Mujairdi, Athijah T-SH2.1 Abed, Jehad M-SC3.1 Al Naimi, Moza T-SB1.2 Abi Jaoude, Maguy M-SC2.1 M-SH1.1 M-SE1.1 Al Qassem, Lamees T-SF3.3 Abou-Ali, Aliaa M-SD3.3 Al Tair, Hend T-SB3.4 Abu Al-Rub, Rashid T-SD3.2 Al- Ali, Khalid M-SA2.3 M-SD3.4 Al-Aamri, Amira M-SF3.4 T-SA2.3 Al-Asheh, Sameer M-SA2.4 M-SD3.3 Al-Durra, Ahmed T-SE2.1 T-SD2.1 T-SE3.5 Abu Ashour, Lamis T-SC2.5 Al-Dweik, Arafat T-SG1.4 Abu Geyab, Mohammed T-SE3.2 Al-Gazali, Lihadh M-SG1.2 Abu Lebdeh, Muath M-SE2.4 M-SG2.3 Abu-Kheil, Yasmeen T-SB3.1 Al-Hamadi, Hussam T-SF3.1 Abu-Zahra, Mohammad M-SA1.2 Al-Hammadi, Yousof M-SF3.4 M-SA2.3 T-SG2.3 Abujayyab, Mohammed T-SA2.5 Al-Jaeedi, Ahlam M-SC1.3 Abunahla, Heba M-SE1.1 Al-ketan, Oraib M-SD3.4 Aburukba, Raafat M-SF3.3 T-SA2.3 AbuShawish, Ibrahim T-SE3.5 M-SD3.3 Achazhiyath Edathil, Anjali M-SA2.5 T-SD2.1 Addad, Yacine T-SB2.4 Al-Mansoori, Muntaser M-SC1.3 Adeyemi, Idowu M-SA1.2 Al-Mualla, Mohammed M-SF1.3 Ahmad, Jamal T-SD2.3 M-SF1.1 Ahmed, Farah T-SD1.1 AL-Naeemy, Ahmad T-SB1.1 Ahmed, Rana M-SF3.1 Al-Ogaili, Fatimah T-SG2.4 Aidan, Ahmed M-SA2.4 Al-Qutayri, Mahmoud T-SB3.4 Al Adem, Kinana M-SG2.5 T-SG2.3 M-SG3.2 T-SE1.1 Al Ali, Mariam M-SG3.4 M-SE2.4 Al Badaai, Muna M-SH2.3 T-SF3.1 Al Delail, Buti M-SF1.1 M-SE1.1 Al Ghailani, Mohamed M-SA3.2 Al-rubaie, Ahmad T-SF3.3 Al Hammadi, Abdalla T-SB2.4 Al-Sarawi, Said T-SE1.1 Al Hammadi, Ahmed M-SE3.2 Al-Sayah, Mohammad M-SG1.4 Al Hammadi, Ayoob M-SB3.4 Al-Shaibani, Sahar M-SC1.3 M-SB3.2 Al-Tal, Taleb M-SG3.1 Al Hosani, Hanan T-SD3.4 Alantali, Aishah T-SA1.4

70 Alazzam, Anas T-SB3.2 Aloul, Fadi M-SF2.3 Aldhaheri, Faisal T-SB2.3 Alozn, Ahmad T-SH2.3 Aldwairi, Monther T-SF2.4 Alqahtani, Anoud T-SC3.6 Alexander, Frazly M-SC2.5 Alqayedi, Fatima M-SF2.5 Alghafli, Khawla T-SF2.5 ALquabeh, Hilal T-SD1.3 Alhabbash, Maha M-SH2.2 AlQubaisi, Ayesha T-SD2.1 Alharthi, Ahmed M-SA1.3 Alrahis, Lilas M-SE3.1 Alhawari, Mohammad M-SE3.4 Alsafar, Habiba M-SG3.4 Alhseinat, Emad M-SA2.1 AlShaikh, AlAnood T-SH1.1 Alhulayil, Mohammad T-SA1.1 Alshehhi, Abdulla M-SC2.4 Ali, Bassam M-SG2.3 Alshehhi, Mohamed T-SD1.4 M-SG1.2 Alsheikh, Negmeldin M-SH2.2 Ali, Dima T-SD2.3 Alshudeifat, Mohammad T-SD3.4 Ali, Mohamed T-SD1.3 T-SD3.1 T-SB1.2 M-SD1.2 T-SB1.1 Alshwaikh, Sana T-SE2.4 M-SD2.1 Alsuwaidi, Jamila T-SB2.1 M-SD3.5 AlYammahi, Maryam T-SF2.1 M-SD1.4 Alzaim, Safa M-SC3.2 Ali, Muhammad T-SA1.2 Alzeyoudi, Aamer T-SB2.2 Alipour Yazdi, Seyed T-SH1.3 An, Boo Hyun M-SC2.3 Aljanahi, Mona M-SH1.4 Anis, Shaheen M-SC1.2 AlJassmi, Maryam M-SH1.2 Arafat, Hassan T-SA2.3 Alketbi, Afra M-SC1.1 Ardjal, Aghiles M-SB2.5 Alketbi, Maitha M-SD2.4 M-SB3.5 AlKetbi, Muna M-SF2.2 Armstrong, Peter M-SB1.4 Alkhatib, Osama T-SC3.2 As'ad, Rami T-SC3.2 Alkhidir, Tamador T-SA3.1 Assaleh, Khaled M-SE2.1 Alkilani, Ghada T-SH2.2 M-SF1.2 Alkindi, Tawaddod M-SB3.4 Atef, Alaa T-SE3.4 M-SC1.4 Aung, Zeyar T-SF1.1 AlMahmoud, Abdelrahman T-SF2.2 Awad, Mohammad T-SB3.5 AlMansoori, Naeema T-SF2.1 Azar, Elie T-SC2.2 Almardood, Mayada T-SC3.3 Azzam, Rana T-SF1.2 Almheiri, Maryam T-SC2.1 Azzam, Sarah M-SG2.5

AlMheiri, Meera M-SC3.1 Almheiri, Saif M-SB2.1 Author Session M-SB3.2 B M-SB2.2 Baioumy, Basma M-SA3.4 M-SB3.4 Balawi, Shadi T-SD3.4 M-SC1.4 T-SD3.1 M-SB3.3 Balbahaith, Zayed T-SF1.3 Almoosa, Nawaf T-SF3.3 Bamgbopa, Musbaudeen M-SB3.3 T-SG1.2 Banat, Fawzi M-SA2.1 Almulla, Sameera T-SF2.3 M-SA2.5 Almutawa, Alia M-SC2.1 Bani Younes, Ahmad T-SA1.1

71 Barada, Hassan T-SG2.3 T-SB3.5 Barada, Hassan T-SF3.3 Dias, Jorge M-SE2.5 Barbosa, Juan David T-SC2.2 Djamah, Tounsia T-SE2.5 Bariah, Lina T-SG2.2 T-SE1.4 Barsoum, Imad T-SD3.3 Djennoune, Said M-SE3.5 Bashir, Safia T-SE2.3 Doumanidis, Haris T-SD2.2 Bawazir, Sarah M-SG3.2 Dushaaq, Ghada M-SE1.2 Beig, Abdul T-SE2.3 Dweik, Arafat T-SG2.2 Berretti, Stefano M-SF1.4 Dzidzienyo, Prosper M-SB1.3 Berrouk, Abdallah Sofiane M-SA1.1 Bettayeb, Maamar M-SB2.5 Author Session T-SE2.5 E M-SB3.5 El Arbid, Sara M-SH2.1 T-SE1.4 El Atab, Nazek T-SA3.2 M-SE3.5 El hajj chehadeh, Sarah M-SG3.4 Bhadran, Vishnu T-SA3.5 El Kadi, Khadije T-SD2.4 Bhaskar, Harish M-SF1.1 El Serafy, Ahmed M-SG2.4 M-SF1.3 El-Awady, Rafat M-SG1.1 Binothman, Mona M-SH1.3 El-Fakih, Khaled M-SF2.3 Boiko, Igor T-SE3.5 M-SF3.3 Boulogeorgos, Alexandros T-SG1.4 M-SF3.5

El-Hag, Ayman T-SE2.2 Author Session El-Khasawneh, Bashar T-SB3.2 C El-Tarhuni, Mohamed T-SG1.3 Calvet, Nicolas M-SB1.4 Elamien, Mohamed M-SE1.4 Cantwell, Wesley T-SA1.4 Elayan, Hadeel T-SG1.2 Chafic, Omar T-SA3.5 Elbassioni, Khaled M-SF2.4 Chau, Chi-Kin M-SF2.4 Eledlebi, Khouloud M-SE2.3 Chebbi, Rachid M-SA3.4 Elsharkawi, Ibrahim M-SG2.4 Chen, Qinghua T-SC1.3 Cho, Pyungyeon M-SC2.4 Author Session Choi, Daniel M-SC2.3 F M-SC1.3 Fanyu, Meng T-SD2.3 Choosri, Methawee M-SC3.3 Farhana Faisal, Titly T-SC1.2 Cisse, Cheikh M-SD3.2 T-SC1.4 Claus, Rebholz T-SD2.2

Author Session Author Session G D Galadari, Abdulla T-SH2.3 Dahlem, Marcus T-SA3.4 Galal Ahmed, Khaled T-SC2.3 Damiani, Ernesto T-SF2.5 T-SH1.3 Darabseh, Tariq T-SA1.3 Gan, Dongming T-SB3.5 Darweesh, Muna M-SE2.2 T-SB3.3 Diago, Miguel M-SB1.4 Garlisi, Corrado M-SA2.2 Dias, Jorge T-SB3.4 Gater, Deborah T-SA3.1 T-SB3.1 Gawanmeh, Amjad T-SF3.1

72 Ghebreyesus, Dawit T-SC2.4 Ibrahim, Taleb T-SA2.4 Goharzadeh, Afshin M-SD3.1 Iqbal, Farkhund M-SF2.2 T-SA3.5 Iqbal, Farkhund T-SF2.1 Griffiths, Huw T-SE3.1 T-SF1.3 T-SE3.2 Iraqi, Youssef M-SF2.1 T-SE3.4 T-SF1.2 Gupta, Ragini M-SF3.5 Isakovic, Abdel M-SE2.3 T-SA3.1 Author Session Islam, Amina T-SC1.4 H T-SC1.2 Ha, Jun Su T-SB2.1 Islam, Md M-SD1.3 Halawani, Yasmin T-SE1.1 Ismail, Mohammed M-SE3.3 Hallfors, Nicholas T-SA3.3 M-SE3.4 Hamiche, Hamid M-SE3.5 T-SE1.3 Hammad, Oussama T-SC3.1 Ismail, Sadiq M-SH1.3 Hammoud, Abdulla T-SE3.3 Harid, Noureddine T-SE3.1 Author Session T-SE3.2 J T-SE3.4 Jaffar, Syed T-SD2.2 Hariga, Moncer T-SC3.2 Janajreh, Isam T-SD2.4 Haryono, Andri T-SE3.1 T-SD1.1 Hasan, Amena T-SD3.5 M-SD2.3 Hasan, Musaab T-SF1.3 M-SB3.1 Hasan, Shadi T-SA2.1 M-SB2.3 Hashaikeh, Raed T-SD1.1 Jasim, Fanan T-SC2.3 M-SC1.2 Jiang, Peng M-SA1.1 M-SC2.2 Jouiad, Mustapha M-SC2.5 Hasoon, Falah M-SC1.3 M-SC3.1 Hassan, Mahitab M-SF3.5 Jouini, Mohamed T-SC1.2 Hassan, Mohamed M-SF1.2 T-SC1.4 Hassan, Mohamed T-SG1.3 Helal, Heba M-SF3.1 Author Session Henschel, Andreas M-SF3.2 K Hernandez, Hector T-SA2.3 Kadadha, Maha T-SG2.3 M-SA1.3 Kalbat, Fatma T-SG1.4 Hersi, Fatima M-SG3.1 Kara, Kursat M-SD2.2 HO, HsinTan M-SA1.4 Karagiannidis, George T-SG1.1 Homouz, Dirar M-SF3.4 T-SG1.4 Hou, Xuliang T-SE2.1 Karam, Zainab M-SB2.2 Hussain, Mohammed M-SB2.3 M-SC1.4 Husseini, Ghaleb M-SG1.4 M-SB3.2 Hussien, Aseel T-SD2.2 Karapetyan, Areg M-SF2.4 Karima, Hammar T-SE2.5 Author Session Kassermally, Rita M-SG1.4 I KASSIM, Sarah M-SE3.5 Ibrahim, Huda M-SF3.3 Kawak, Paul M-SG1.4

73 Kawak, Pierre M-SG1.4 Mazzoni, Luca M-SB3.1 Keewan, Mohammad M-SA2.1 McGloughlin, Tim M-SG3.2 Khalaf, Kinda M-SG3.2 Menon, Varsha M-SG1.1 Khan, Kamran T-SA1.2 Milewski, Adam T-SC2.4 Khan, Mohammed T-SB1.3 Mir, Hasan M-SE2.1 Khan, Mohd T-SD2.5 Mohamed, Fedah M-SG2.3 Khan, Tariq T-SD1.4 Mohamed, Mohamed T-SA2.2 Khandoker, Ahsan M-SG3.2 Mohamed, Zeanap M-SG1.3 M-SG3.3 Mohamed Elsayed, Khashan, Saud M-SD2.5 Nourhan M-SE3.1 Khonji, Mahmoud M-SF2.1 Mohammad, Baker M-SE3.3 Kilani, Dima M-SE3.4 T-SE1.1 Kizhisseri, Mohamed T-SA2.2 M-SE2.4 M-SE3.4

Author Session M-SE1.1 L T-SE1.3 Lahib, Fatme M-SG1.4 T-SE1.2 Lalia, Boor M-SC1.2 Mohammed, Suaad M-SF2.2 Lawal, Sadiq T-SD3.3 Mohiuddin, Abdullah M-SB2.4 Lee, Hyunjoo M-SG3.2 T-SB3.3 Lee, Jisung M-SC1.3 Moreira, Paulo T-SA3.4 Mostafa, Ahmad M-SC1.2 M-SC2.3 Li, Chang T-SD1.4 Mouftah, Shaimaa M-SG2.1 Liang, Guangda M-SD1.3 Mourad, Abdel-Hamid M-SD1.1 Liao, Kin T-SC1.1 M-SD2.5 Lu, Jin You M-SC3.2 Muhaidat, Sami T-SG1.1 T-SG2.2 M-SC1.1 Luo, Shaohong T-SC1.1 Mukhtar, Noora M-SA2.4 Mustafa, Ibrahim M-SB2.2

Author Session M-SB3.4 M M-SC1.4 Maghelal, Praveen T-SC3.6 Muyeen, S. M. T-SE2.1 T-SC3.3 Mahmoud, Abdulqader T-SE1.3 Author Session Mahmoud, Shereen M-SH2.4 N Mahmoud, Soliman T-SE2.4 Nabil, Kharoua M-SD1.3 Nashef, Enas M-SA1.2 M-SE1.4 Manandhar, Prajowal T-SF1.1 Nayfeh, Ammar T-SA3.2 Mansouri, Mariam M-SC2.3 M-SE1.2 Mansouri, Rachid M-SB3.5 Ndiaye, Malick T-SC3.5 M-SB2.5 Marpu, Prashanth T-SF1.1 Author Session Marshoud, Hanaa T-SG1.1 O Martin, Matthew M-SG2.2 Ogidiama, Oghare T-SB1.4 Matter, Youssef T-SA1.3 Ogungbenro, Adetola M-SA2.3 Omar, Hany M-SG3.1 M-SD1.1

74 Omer, Ala Eldin T-SG1.3 M-SD1.2 Osman, Ahmed M-SF2.3 Sahban, Mustafa T-SC3.1 Ospina Aldana, Gustavo M-SD2.1 Sahnoon, Mohammad M-SE2.1 M-SD3.5 Salah, Khaled M-SF2.5 Otrok, Hadi T-SF3.2 Salam, Saqib T-SD1.4 T-SG2.3 Saleh, Ekram M-SG1.1 Saleh, Hani M-SE3.3 Author Session M-SE3.1 P M-SE2.4 Padmanabhan, Megana M-SF2.2 M-SE3.4 Palmisano, Giovanni M-SA2.2 Salih, Mubarak M-SA3.3 T-SA2.1 Sandeep, Divyasree M-SG2.4 M-SB3.4 Sassi, Mohamed T-SC1.4 Paul, Vinod M-SG1.4 T-SC1.2 Polychronopoulou, Kyriaki M-SC2.1 T-SD3.5 Schiffer, Andreas M-SC2.4 Author Session Selim, Bassant T-SG2.1 Q Seneviratne, Lakmal T-SB3.1 Qamar, Sayyad M-SD2.3 T-SB3.5 Qasem, Maryam M-SC2.4 Sersour, Lamia T-SE1.4 Quang, Dang Viet M-SA2.3 Sessa, Jadran M-SF3.2 Shaif, Hesham T-SF2.4 Author Session Shamayleh, Abdulrahim T-SC3.5 R Shamim, Tariq T-SD3.2 Rabbani, Shahid M-SB1.2 T-SB1.4 T-SD3.5 T-SB1.3 Ramadan, Ayman T-SC3.1 Shan, Suzan M-SH3.4 Ramadan, Wafaa M-SG1.1 Shanableh, Tamer M-SF1.2 Rasras, Mahmoud M-SE1.2 Shanmugam, Kumar M-SC3.3 Raza, Aikifa M-SC3.2 T-SD2.5 M-SC1.1 Shapsough, Shams M-SF2.3 Reddy, Chappidi Siva Sharaf, Omar M-SB1.1 Kumar M-SC3.3 M-SD2.2 Renda, Federico T-SD2.2 Sharif, Bayan T-SG1.1 Rizk, Nahla M-SG2.2 T-SG1.4 Rosyid, Abdur T-SB3.2 Shubair, Raed T-SG1.2 Rowshan, Reza T-SA2.3 Siddiqui, Aamenah M-SE1.3 M-SD3.3 Simmons, Rodney T-SD3.3 Ruta, Dymitr M-SE2.3 Simões, Marcelo T-SE2.1 Singaravel, Saepurahman M-SC2.2 Author Session Singh, Shakti M-SE1.3 S Siyam, Wisal T-SE2.2 Saab, Roba M-SD1.4 Sofotasios, Paschalis T-SG1.1 Sabbagh, Abdulrahman T-SF1.3 Sreedhar, Nurshaun T-SA2.3 Saeed, Adnan T-SD3.4 Stefanini, Cesare T-SD2.2 T-SD3.1 M-SG3.2

75 Sulaiman, Nour M-SH3.3 Vitor, Rute M-SG1.4 Suliman, Ahmed T-SF3.2 Vunnam, Srinivasulu M-SG3.1 Suliman, Malaz T-SA2.4 Susantyoko, Rahmat Agung M-SB3.2 Author Session M-SB2.1 W Sweidan, Haliemeh M-SA3.1 Wahbah, Maisam T-SE1.2 Wang, Di T-SF3.3 Author Session Wehbe, Youssef T-SC2.4 T Werghi, Naoufel M-SF1.4 Taha, Bilal M-SE2.5 M-SE2.5 Taha, Kamal M-SF3.4 Wu, Chieh-Han M-SB2.2 Taha, Tarek T-SB3.4 T-SB3.3 Author Session Tajik, Abdul Raouf T-SD3.2 Y Tariq, Urwa Mohd M-SH2.5 Yang, Yang M-SA3.5 M-SH3.5 Yeun, Chan Yeob T-SF2.5 Tariq, Usman M-SE2.1 Yi, Yongsun M-SC2.4 Tekeste, Temesghen M-SE3.1 Yoon, Ho Joon T-SB2.3 Tello, Ghalia M-SE3.1 Yuan, Jing T-SE2.1 Temimi, Marouane T-SC2.4 Yurindatama, Danar T-SD1.2 Teo, Jeremy M-SG2.5 Thomas, Navya T-SA2.3 Author Session Toledano Garcia, Diego T-SA2.1 Z Tortorici, Claudio M-SF1.4 Zaher, Dana M-SG3.1 Twayana, Krishna T-SA3.4 Zaidani, Mouna T-SD3.2 Zaki, Wael M-SD3.2 Author Session M-SC3.4 U Zayed, Ahmed M-SH3.1 Ubaid, Alaa T-SC3.1 Zemerly, Jamal M-SF2.5 Ubaid, Jabir T-SD2.5 M-SF1.1 Umer, Rehan T-SA1.4 Zhang, Dawei M-SD3.1 M-SC3.4 Zhang, Jingjing T-SC1.3 T-SA1.2 Zhang, TieJun M-SC3.2 M-SC1.1 Author Session Zhuman, Botagoz M-SC2.2 V M-SD3.5 Viegas, Jaime M-SC3.1 Ziauddin, Mohammed M-SD2.5 M-SC2.5 Zitouni, M. Sami M-SF1.3 Viet, Nguyen M-SC3.4

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