text:
JAPAN: Honda launches micro EV commuter prototype
By Graeme Roberts | 14 November 2012
Honda Motor has unveiled the Micro Commuter prototype, a micro-sized short distance EV commuter. This vehicle was developed in consideration of the vehicle categories for micro-sized mobility products that are currently being discussed under the initiative of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Japan as well as for the regulations for the L7 category in Europe.
Using vehicles based on this prototype model, Honda will begin demonstration testing in Japan in 2013. The demonstration testing will verify the potential of the vehicle in various uses including supporting everyday short-distance transportation for families with small children and for senior citizens, home delivery services, commuting and car sharing.
Advancing the Micro Commuter Concept that was first introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show 2011, this prototype model realised a cabin space to seat one driver and two children in the micro-sized body.
The adoption of the variable design platform positions components such as the battery, motor and control unit under the floor and in the rear space to concentrate the vehicle driving functions into a compact space. This made it comparatively easier to develop and produce a body and interior that accommodates various uses and customers' needs than existing vehicles.
Other features of this model include the use of a user-owned tablet device for the application of functions such as meter display, navigation, audio and back-up camera display, and the ability to charge the battery of the tablet using solar cells mounted on the vehicle roof. Moreover, Honda is continuing research of onboard solar cells to provide solar energy to assist the driving.
Furthermore, through collaboration with the Honda smart home system (HSHS) that has already begun demonstration testing in the city of Saitama in Japan, Honda is planning to verify the CO2 reduction effect from the optimised energy management in everyday life and the values this vehicle can provide for customers when it is used not only as an EV but also as a household battery.
Sectors: Electric drive, Vehicle manufacturers, Vehicle product & design
Companies: Honda
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International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 937462, 12 pages
Node Classification Based on Functionality in Energy-Efficient and Reliable Wireless Sensor Networks
1Department of Computer Science, Chungbuk National University, 52 Naesudong-ro, Cheongju 361-763, Republic of Korea
2Department of Software Engineering, Chungbuk National University, 52 Naesudong-ro, Cheongju 361-763, Republic of Korea
Received 27 May 2012; Revised 24 September 2012; Accepted 30 November 2012
Academic Editor: Regina B. Araujo
Copyright © 2012 Ning Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Energy efficiency and reliability are two important factors when we design a wireless sensor network (WSN). In this paper, we proposed an energy-efficient and reliable hierarchical mechanism for WSNs. We utilized clustering structure to decrease energy consumption. Because cluster head plays an important role in WSN, we designed a substitute of cluster head (SCH) in order to guarantee the data propagation reliability. Based on different functionalities of sensor nodes we creatively classify sensor nodes into five categories: branch node (BN), cluster head (CH), substitute of cluster head (SCH), intermedium node (IN), and normal node. By adopting different MAC and network strategies for different node categories, energy consumption can be greatly reduced and data reliability can be significantly increased in the proposed WSN mechanism. The simulation results showed that this proposed mechanism realized the objective in aspects of energy efficiency and reliability.
1. Introduction
Wireless sensor networks consist of hundreds to thousands of sensor nodes. These sensor nodes are usually homogenous and one or more resource-rich base stations exist in WSNs which is the medium between WSNs and the outside information systems. The sensor nodes collect interest data through sensing the environment parameters such as temperature, wind speed, and humidity, then propagate the sensed data to the base station for furthering processing. Nowadays, WSN technology has been considered mature enough for real-life application such as control and automation, environment monitoring, healthcare, security and surveillance, smart home and building, vehicle tracking and detection, and precision agriculture.
Due to the small size and low price, most sensor nodes have constrains in processors, memory size, communications, and energy capability. Among these limitations, energy saving is always a remarkable issue and has got much attention for designing the WSN protocol. Amounts of protocols in MAC and network layers have been proposed with the purpose of saving energy [1, 2]. Meanwhile, strict energy constraints restrict long and reliable performance of sensor nodes. Hardware often cannot work regularly due to energy depletion. At the same time, sensor networks are often deployed in harsh and hazardous environments, which affect normal operation of sensor nodes. The wireless radios of sensor nodes are severely affected by these environment factors. Communication faults often occur in WSNs due to the interferences. Therefore, reliability is another highlighted challenge for the real-life applications in WSNs. It is necessary for the WSN system to maintain high fault tolerant capability.
Many literatures [2–5] have shown that hierarchical structure is an efficient means to save energy in WSNs. Hierarchical structure can greatly reduce the amount of direct communications between sensor nodes and base station. It is concluded [3] that the energy consumption of cluster head is much higher than normal nodes due to the extra works. By electing cluster heads in rotation the energy consumption can be balanced among nodes and the total energy consumption can be significantly reduced such that network lifetime is prolonged. In this paper we utilized the clustering hierarchical structure.
Besides the hierarchical structure, energy-efficient MAC protocols [1] also achieve energy savings by controlling the radio wake/sleep and arranging reasonable access schedule to reduce energy waste. MAC protocols for WSNs can be categorized into two main groups: schedule-based and contention-based protocols. In our proposed mechanism, for different category of nodes and in different phases we utilized different MAC protocols flexibly to reduce the energy consumption. By turning off radio of sensor nodes when they are idle in WSNs, our proposed mechanism maximized energy saving.
Although cluster head plays an important role in hierarchical WSNs, most literatures did not consider the reliability of cluster head. Cluster head has to keep awake in the whole process, from cluster formation, data collection, and data aggregation to data propagation. It needs to receive/transmit data all the time and execute complex operations such as TDMA schedule generation and data aggregation. Extra works make it more easily energy exhausted. Long time wakeup also makes it possible to have hardware or communication malfunction. Once cluster head fails, the cluster working has to halt and whole cluster's data would be lost. So the reliability of cluster head is very important. In this paper, we proposed an approach in which a substitute of cluster head (SCH) is selected and works in the sudden failure of cluster head. For substitute of cluster head, it needs more energy consumption than other noncluster head nodes. But by sacrificing consumption in one node, the reliability of whole cluster could be increased. Moreover, by selecting SCH in rotation, the average energy consumption is insignificant and does not affect the whole system.
Finding multiple node-disjoint paths also provides fault tolerance in routing. The system can switch from an unavailable path with broken links to alternative candidate paths. Major solutions [6, 7] for fault-tolerant and reliable data propagation of WSNs are based on the multipath routing paradigm, which provides each sensor node with alternative paths to destination. It solved the problem that wireless communication is not stable and provided fault tolerance for data transmission. In the phase of aggregated data transmission from cluster heads to the base station, we perform multipath discovery algorithm for increasing reliability.
Based on the above strategies, we classify sensor nodes into five categories according to their different roles in WSNs. They are branch node (BN), cluster head (CH), substitute of cluster head (SCH), inter-medium node (IN), and normal node. For each category, it executes alternative network and MAC protocol and operates specific functions, such as schedule generation, data aggregation, energy alarm, radio control, route discovery, and data transfer. All the design standards for each category are based on considerations of energy efficiency and reliability.
There are some original and progressive contributions in this paper: firstly, we proposed an energy-efficient and reliable WSN mechanism, which adopted multiple strategies including the hierarchical clustering structure, multipath routing discovery protocol, energy-efficient and flexible MAC protocol, and substitute of cluster head. Secondly, we classify sensor nodes into five categories according to their functionalities in WSNs. For each category, we considered extra works that are responsible for and designed flexible MAC protocol. This strategy guarantees more fairness in node energy consumption and prolongs the network lifetime as far as possible. Thirdly, the mechanism of substitute of cluster head (SCH) accounts for the situation of CH's sudden failure. Moreover, multipath discovery scheme can solve the problem when a path fails. These guarantee the reliability and robustness of the system. Fourthly, all the phases including cluster formation, data transmission within cluster, and multiple path transmission are in distributed manner; it guarantees the scalability of the network. Finally, we use two global parameters of total energy and node sum to improve the performances of both cluster head/SCH election and routing discovery. In our scheme, these two parameters are updated after every round and calculated by the base station. It is an efficient way to control the network quality.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the related works. Section 3 describes the classification of sensor nodes and explains the detailed algorithms of each category. Section 4 analyzes the simulation results and shows why this mechanism outperforms others. Finally, Section 5 draws the conclusion.
2. Related Works
2.1. Energy Saving Mechanisms
2.1.1. Hierarchical Structure
The aim of the hierarchical structure is to reduce the energy consumption by reducing the amount of direct communications. Clustering structure is the main form of hierarchical structures in WSNs.
The literature [2, 3] stated a survey of energy-efficient hierarchical cluster-based protocols in WSNs. As illustrated in Figure 1, the network is divided into a few clusters. Nodes are grouped into clusters with a cluster head responsible of routing from the cluster to the base station. In this model, data is firstly collected periodically by normal sensor nodes. Instead of directly transmitting data to the base station, cluster heads collect the data from the sensor nodes within their clusters and send an aggregated data to the base station directly or through a multihop path (based on the communication radio range of CHs and scale of network).
Cluster heads consume relatively more energy than none-cluster head nodes because cluster heads have more loads to handle. Hence, cluster heads may run out of their energy faster than other sensor nodes.
LEACH [4] is the classical clustering hierarchical protocol for WSNs, which incorporates randomized rotation of the high-energy cluster head position among the sensors to avoid draining the energy of any one sensor in the network. In this way, the energy load of being a cluster head is evenly distributed among the nodes. The probability of cluster head election depends on the number of clusters and the sum of the sensor nodes :
In (1), is the round number and depicts whether node has been the cluster head in recent rounds.
LEACH enhances network lifetime and energy consumption compared with the flat algorithms. LEACH approach is based on the assumption that all nodes start with an equal amount of energy and cluster heads have uniform energy consumption. Obviously the latter is not realistic. One shortcoming of LEACH is that it does not consider the energy factor when electing cluster headers, whereas we designed a more efficient cluster head election algorithm. Secondly, LEACH does not work well in the dynamic network. It is because parameters (number of clusters, number of nodes) are programmed into the nodes a priori, but in reality these parameters continuously change with the depletion of nodes. Furthermore, LEACH is not scalable for large size of WSN. It is assumed that every node has enough power to communicate with others and BS directly, but it is not realistic for a large scale of WSN.
The subsequent LEACH-optimized protocols in literatures [5, 8, 9] mostly improve the capability of cluster head distribution, so that the energy consumption of the whole network is reduced and the system lifetime is prolonged. However, most of these hierarchical protocols only improved the algorithm of cluster formation and gave little consideration on aggregated data transmission. Since the aggregated data is important, the reliability of transmission should be guaranteed.
2.1.2. Energy-Efficient MAC Protocols
In wireless communications, energy waste mainly comes from the following sources: idle listening, data collision, overhear and control packet overhead, and so forth. Among them, idle listening causes nearly half of the energy waste in WSNs [1], so turning off the radio in unnecessary time is almost the most efficient way to save energy. Energy-efficient MAC protocols achieve energy savings by controlling the radio wake/sleep and arranging reasonable access schedule to reduce energy waste caused by these sources.
MAC-layer protocols can be categorized into two types: schedule-based and random access protocols. The former is the protocol in which access to the channel is based on a schedule. Channel access is usually limited to one node at a time. Random access protocols avoid preallocation of resources to nodes, so they are more flexible than schedule-based protocols. However, this results in collision. The main objective of random access protocols is to minimize the occurrence of collisions.
TDMA (time-division multiple access) is a typical schedule-based MAC solution. It is achieved by dividing the radio frequency into time slots and then allocating unique time slots to each communicating node. Nodes take turns wake up and transmit/receive data. In LEACH protocol, it uses TDMA in data transmission within cluster. The time line of LEACH protocol is as shown in Figure 5(a). Most clustering WSN protocols use TDMA as the MAC protocol to manage the access of nodes within a cluster.
Although TDMA protocol can reduce energy consumption greatly, it limits the number of joint nodes and the constraints of time allocation so that it is short of scalability and flexibility. Contention-based protocols require no coordination among the nodes accessing the channel and provide more scalability and flexibility. CSMA series are the popular contention-based protocols. For WSNs, S-MAC [10] is proposed to reduce the energy efficiency by using a low duty cycle operation. It also provided schemes for collision avoidance, overhearing avoidance, and synchronization. But the energy saving may result in high latency and low throughput. In the same time, collisions cannot be avoided in content-based MAC protocols. In our proposed mechanism, we use both TDMA and content-based MAC protocols in different phases.
2.2. Reliability Mechanisms
2.2.1. Multipath Routing Algorithm
As described in [6], there has been a lot of research works in multipath routing for WSNs in recent years. Using multipath routing provides fault tolerance of node failure along single path and increases the network reliability. Constructing node disjoint paths has been considered the most reliable method in WSNs.
H-SPREAD [7] uses the branch-aware flooding method to find a set of node-disjoint paths. As the extension of the flooding-based beaconing protocol [11], H-SPREAD proposed an -to-1 multipath discovery protocol. The multipath discovery procedure is presented in two phases, with each phase implementing one of the mechanisms. The mechanism used in the phase one, which is termed as a branch-aware flooding, takes advantage of the simple flooding technique. Without introducing additional routing messages, the mechanism is able to find a certain number of node-disjoint paths, depending on the density of the network topology. The mechanism used in the phase two, which is termed as a multipath extension of flooding, helps to exchange the node-disjoint paths found in the phase one among the nodes on different branches. At the cost of some more message exchanges, it is able to increase the number of paths found at each sensor node.
Figure 2 shows the algorithm of branch-aware flooding. We name the one-hop neighbors of the BS as branch node (BN). If a node receives a request message from the neighbor with different BN value, it can be regarded as the discovery of an alternative path. For example the square nodes (A, B, C, D) represent BNs. Node c firstly receives message from node a, then it constructs a primary path (A-a-c). And then c continuously receives messages from nodes b, d, e. When judging an alternative disjoint path, c will compare the BN of each sender. If BN of sender is the same with its, it means the new path is joint; otherwise, the new path is a disjoint one. For the paths with the same BN, c will compare the hop number. The less hop number path is selected. By this way, an alternative disjoint path (C-b-c) is constructed by c.
In our proposed path discovery algorithm, similar routing protocol is used. Instead of store alternative paths before data propagation, we utilized a more flexible path discovery algorithm.
Branch node and nodes nearer, the base station relay more packets and more actively participate in communication. As a result, these nodes expand more energy and are more failure prone due to energy depletion. How to conserve energy in these nodes is an important issue, for if these nodes are exhausted, all paths to the base station are broken. In previous multipath routing protocols for WSNs [6, 7, 12, 13], the problem of how to avoid extra energy consumption in neighbors of base station has not be discussed, whereas in our proposed mechanism this problem was considered.
2.2.2. Clustering Fault Tolerant Mechanism
In [14, 15], fault tolerance of cluster-based WSNs is discussed.
CPEQ in [14] is a cluster-based routing protocol. It takes account of the reliability of data transmission within clusters. It assumes that data propagation within clusters is multihop. It implements a path repair mechanism within clusters. It did not account for the situation that cluster head failed. The literature [15] uses the CHs coordination mechanism for fault tolerance. CHs exchange status message after every cycle to detect the failure of CH. If failure is detected, the nodes with the fault CH are assigned to near cluster in next round automatically. This mechanism needs CHs exchange a lot of messages resulting in much overhead. Moreover, it causes node isolation problem after reassignment.
3. Node Classification Mechanism
3.1. Network Model
We assume this proposed mechanism is for a large scale and dense wireless sensor network. One or more base stations exist as the gateway between WSN and the outside information system. Except base station, all sensor nodes have similar initial energy and capabilities (sensing/processing/communication). Nodes need not change their radio range in our system. Communications between nodes are bidirectional and symmetric. All nodes are able to be aware of their residual energy. Each node has a unique identifier to be marked in the network. Within a cluster the communication from normal nodes to CH is one hop, whereas the communication from cluster heads to base station is multihop. This approach is more suitable for the applications in which sensed data is collected periodically. Finally, synchronization is necessary among sensor nodes due to the demand of MAC protocol.
3.2. Energy-Efficient and Reliable Mechanism
As in [13], this protocol mainly consists of three phase. The first phase is the initialization phase, in which each node retrieves the information about the neighbors and the network. The second phase is the cluster formation phase, in which clusters are formed in a distributed manner. The final phase is the data propagation phase, which includes two steps: sensed data is transmitted within clusters, and aggregated data is transmitted from cluster heads to base station. Our scheme utilized hybrid MAC protocols for different phases. The entire WSN is displayed in Figure 3, where we can see different categories of sensor nodes.
3.2.1. Phase One: Initial Broadcasting
This phase starts from the BS broadcasting a request message. The format of this message is , RID, BID, SID, , , , , , where INI indicates that the type of message is initialization; RID is the round identifier, which is generated by the base station; BID is the identifier of the branch, that is, identifier of the branch node; SID is the identifier of the sender node; is the residual energy of the sender node; is the hop count from the sender to the base station; depicts the total energy of all nodes, and it is calculated by the base station. Finally is the sum of nodes after last round. Here and are prepared for the selection of cluster heads. depicts the timestamp for the ending of phase 1 and the beginning of the next phase.
Hop by hop, node receives the broadcast message, updates information of message, and rebroadcasts it. Upon receiving the first message, node marks the sender node as its parent. After this phase, every node decides whether it is a Branch node, stores the parameters of total energy and total number of nodes for the next phase, and constructs the table of neighborhood information, which will be used to discover multiple paths in the data propagation phase. This mechanism takes advantage of the broadcast nature of the wireless communication. Each node rebroadcasts once and only once. The table of neighbor information is as shown in Table 1.
In Table 1, node stores all the received neighbors' information, including neighbor node ID, whether it is the parent node, branch ID of this neighbor, residual energy, hop count to BS, and the received signal strengthen indicator (RSSI) which is proportional to the distance between them. In this phase, branch aware flooding algorithm is used. In this process even some messages were lost due to some node failures or link conflicts, and nodes could obtain the network parameters from other neighbors and construct the approximate impress about the neighbors. All sensor nodes keep awake until this phase ends, that is, time .
3.2.2. Phase Two: Cluster Formation
After previous phase, every node has got the information about the total energy and sum of nodes . After time , phase two begins and each node begins to decide whether to be a cluster head in a distributed manner.
Once the node has selected itself to be cluster head, it broadcasts an advertisement message (ADV) using CSMA MAC protocol. This message is a small message containing the node's ID, cluster's ID, and an ADV header. Nodes decide which cluster they should belong to by choosing the cluster head that requires the minimum communication energy, based on the received signal strength of the advertisement messages from cluster heads. After each node has decided to which cluster it belongs, it transmits a join-request message (JOIN-REQ) back to the chosen cluster head also using CSMA MAC protocol. This message consists of the node's ID, the joining cluster head's ID, the residual energy, and the hop count to BS of the node.
The cluster head node sets up a TDMA schedule and broadcasts this schedule to the nodes in the cluster. In the same time, according to the parameters of residual energy and hop count and the RSSI, CH selects a node as a SCH. SCH declaration is broadcasted in the same message with the TDMA schedule. Node matching the SCH_ID will mark itself as a SCH.
In this phase, CSMA MAC protocol is utilized to avoid communication collisions. To conserve energy, branch nodes do not join any cluster, so they turn into asleep in the whole phase. Other sensor nodes keep awake during cluster formation.
3.2.3. Phase Three: Data Transmission
This phase mainly consists of two steps: at first the data propagation within a cluster, then the data propagation from the CHs to the BS, which is multihop transmission along multipaths.
In the data transmission within clusters, nodes comply with the TDMA MAC protocol. Nodes send their data to the cluster head at most once per frame during their allocated transmission slot. Once the cluster head receives all the data, it performs data aggregation to enhance the common signal and reduce the uncorrelated noise among the signals. In our proposed mechanism, cluster heads execute a spatial correlation on collected data. In our approach, after every round, BS needs to know the whole residual energy of all nodes and the sum of nodes alive. Therefore, in this step, besides the data aggregation, the cluster head also does the following computations:
is the sum of nodes in this cluster, while is the whole residual energy value of all nodes in this cluster, which accounts for the energy consumption during the data propagation. Finally, the cluster head sends the data message, which consists of the message type (DATA), aggregated data, , and .
During the above process, if the cluster head fails, for example, running out of energy, all the sensed data within the cluster will be lost. It is why we select a substitute of cluster head. Even if CH cannot work normally, SCH will take over the works of CH to guarantee the reliability of data propagation.
In this step, CHs and SCHs keep awake during the whole process, whereas other nodes only wake up in its allocated time slot.
The second step is the aggregated data transmission from the cluster heads to the BS. Since the BS may be far away, this is a multihop and high-energy transmission. Before data transmission there is a process that we call "INs Broadcasting" as shown in Figure 4. In this process, CHs (or SCHs) firstly select appropriate next hop nodes based on the information of neighbor table and broadcast a NEXT_IDs message. This message not only includes the next hop nodes' ID, but also includes hop count from CH to BS along each next hop node. The nodes which receive NEXT_IDs message from CHs/SCHs will mark themselves as select their next hop nodes, and rebroadcast NEXT_IDs messages. NEXT_IDS messages recurrently broadcast until they are received by branch nodes. By this way, sensor nodes in WSNs can be distinguished between intermedium nodes and none-intermedium nodes.
In the data transmission from CHs to BS, only CHs/SCHs, INs, and BNs keep awake and take part in the data transmission, whereas other nodes turn into sleep until the process ends. As shown in Figure 4, after every data transmission, the sender node will wait for the SUC message from the recipient. If the SUC message is received, the sender will turn into sleep until the end of data transmission; otherwise, if the sender cannot receive the SUC message in a limited period of time, the sender will resend the data to another next hop node and the data transmission process will repeat. Furthermore, in last INs broadcasting process, each IN knows the hop count of the path it resides, so it can estimate the waiting time according to (3):
In (3), is the whole hop count of the path, whereas is the hop count from to BS. is the approximate time for data transmission between two one-hop nodes, which includes the time for data transmission and receiving, plus the time for SUC message transmission and receiving. Coefficient is larger than 1, which accounts for delay of data transmission. During period of , INs keep asleep and do not wake up until the end of . Using this flexible MAC protocol, all nodes turn into sleep in their unnecessary time, so energy consumption in this phase could be decreased greatly.
There are several disjoint paths for data delivery from CHs to BS. As illustrated in Figure 3, the solid arrow path is the primary path from CH to BS, whereas the dashed arrow paths are alternative paths as the backup of primary path.
Ultimately, the sensed data and the parameters of the network (sum of nodes , whole residual energy ) should be retrieved by the BS. Then the BS initiates another round.
3.3. Node Classification
Based on the functionality in WSN, we defined five classifications for sensor nodes. It is remarkable that some category may exist only in a specific phase not the entire process.
3.3.1. Branch Node (BN)
The definition of the BN is the one-hop neighbors of the base station. According to the branch aware flooding algorithm [7], each BN represents one branch. As shown in Figure 2, nodes A, B, C, and D are BNs. In phase 1, upon receiving the first message, the node marks the sender node as its parent and the path in which parent node resides is regarded the primary path. If a node receives an initial broadcasting message with different BN value from the value of its parent node, it can be regarded as the discovery of an alternative path.
According to the simulation result in [7], the nearer to the BS, the node has more burdens on data transmission. The BN acts a critical role in the network, because once it is exhausted the whole branch is separated and the downstream paths are correspondingly failed. In order to conserve energy, in our proposed mechanism the BN does not join the cluster formation and data sense. It only acts as a router in the network. Furthermore, BNs keep asleep in phase 2, by this way BNs conserve much energy. If its energy is below a limitation value, it should announce that it abandons the role of branch node and transforms to a normal node.
In phase 1, if node received initial broadcasting message directly from BS, it will decide whether it should be a branch node according to its residual energy:
is the energy consumption in data transmission, whereas is in data reception. is proportional to the number of messages. is the coefficient. If the condition is satisfied, node marks itself as the BN. By this strategy, we limited branch nodes to the nodes with more residual energy avoiding early energy exhaustion of some nodes.
3.3.2. Cluster Head (CH)
In our approach, cluster heads are selected in distribution based on the residual energy, the density, and the distance to base station. CH is in charge of data receive, TDMA schedule generation, data process, data aggregation, and data transmission. The energy consumption of CH is much quicker than normal nodes. So an evenly CH selection algorithm is necessary.
In our paper, CH is selected in a distributed manner. Node generates a random number between . Then node calculates the probability as (5). If , node will declare itself a CH:
is the residual energy of node . is the sum of neighbors of node , which can be retrieved from the neighborhood table. is the total number of all sensor nodes, whereas is the total energy of all nodes. is the hop number to BS. is the optimal number of clusters, which can be calculated as about 5% of . , , and are the coefficients, whose values are in the range .
Compared with LEACH, the CH selection algorithm considers the residual energy, the density (number of neighbors), and the distance (hop count) to BS of each node, instead of the simple randomized rotation. So the cluster election algorithm has more efficiency. In here two global parameters are used to control the quality of clustering, which are the total number of existing nodes and the total amount of energy of all nodes . These two parameters are updated after one round and reflect the status of network.
3.3.3. Substitute of Cluster Head (SCH)
Substitute of cluster head (SCH) is defined as the substitute when CH suddenly fails. Because of the important role in WSNs, the reliability of cluster head is very important. In this paper, we proposed a method where a substitute of cluster head is selected and works when cluster head has failure. For this substitute of cluster head (SCH), it needs more energy consumption than other noncluster head nodes. But by sacrificing energy consumption in one node, the reliability of whole cluster can be increased. Moreover, by selecting SCH in rotation, the average energy consumption is insignificant and does not affect the whole system. This strategy guarantees that the data could be transmitted correctly even if the cluster head fails. This could improve the reliability and fault tolerance of the system.
The strategy of SCH includes two critical parts: the first is SCH selection algorithm, and the second is the MAC protocol designed for SCH.
SCH selection work is done by CH. After CH is selected, CH broadcasts ADV message, then nodes send their information including their ID, residual energy, and hop count to BS in JOIN-REQ messages to the cluster head. Based on these parameters and received signal strengthen indicator (RSSI), CH finally appoints a node as a substitute who has more residual energy, less hop count, and nearer to CH. SCH appointment is broadcast with the TDMA schedule message:
Equation (6) shows the principle to select the SCH. A CH receives JOIN-REQ messages, which include the residual energy and hop count to BS of all cluster member nodes. Through calculation as in (6), the node which has the maximal composite value of residual energy, hop count, and RSSI is selected as the SCH.
During the process of data transmission within cluster, if the cluster head is in any urgent situation, for example, physical fault or communication fault, at this time the data transmission or data aggregation process is carrying on, then all the sensed data within the cluster will be lost. It is why we select a substitute node. In this process, all nodes within the cluster comply with the TDMA schedule except SCH. SCH keeps awake during all the process. It receives data as the CH does. After the TDMA schedule expires, different with LEACH, there is a specific time slot for CH to transmit an RCV_SUC to SCH. In this timeout, if SCH receives RCV_SUC, it empties the memory and waits for the next phase; otherwise it means that there are some problems with CH, so SCH takes over the works of data aggregation and aggregated data transmission. By simply inserting a timeslot, the TDMA schedule need not be altered at all. It is a very reliable and flexible fault tolerant scheme. The difference of our MAC protocol with LEACH is illustrated in Figure 5.
3.3.4. Intermedium Node (IN)
The data transmission between CHs and BS is multihop communication. In this process, we assume that only nodes in the delivery paths need to be awake. We name these nodes intermedium nodes (INs). IN is specially defined for the process of data transmission from CHs/SCH to BS. By this way, the idle listening and overhearing of nodes not in the routes from CHs/SCHs to BS are avoided, achieving significant energy saving.
Before transmitting data, CH/SCH performs a route discovery phase beforehand. After this phase, CH/SCH determines its next hop nodes and broadcasts a message. The next hop nodes receive the message, mark themselves as Ins, and keep awake in the following data transmission process, whereas other nodes go to sleep until the data transmission ends. The MAC protocol for this process has been discussed in phase 3.
The detailed next hop node discovery algorithm is described in Algorithm 1. At first the CH (or SCH) checks its neighborhood table as shown in Table 1. The node marked with "Parent" is the next hop along the primary path from the cluster head. Then CH continuously looks for the neighbors with different BID value from its parent. After comparing the energy and hop count, the CH chooses the next hop nodes. Other INs execute the same algorithm recursively to discover the next hop nodes. This route discovery algorithm generates multiple disjoint paths to improve the reliability of data delivery.
3.3.5. Other Nodes
The other nodes are in charge of basic works such as initialization, data sensing, cluster formation, and data transmission (within cluster). Normal nodes have minimal energy consumption than other categories.
4. Performance Analysis
In this section, we evaluated the performance of our proposed mechanism based on two factors: energy consumption and reliability. At first, we observed the energy dissipation amount of each category in one round and analyzed the cause in details. Then we analyzed the energy savings by using strategies of branch node energy conservation and flexible INs MAC protocol. We also compared the proposed mechanism with previous clustering based works [4, 5] on the performance of network lifetime, which is a synthesis factor to evaluate the superiority of wireless sensor networks. In the next we set different node failure rates and observed the average packet delivery ratios, which reflect the success rate of packet transmissions to the BS. We compared the situations of with/without SCHs and multipath routing algorithm, respectively. WSN reliability can be measured through this result.
4.1. Experiment Setup
We have carried out a set of experiments using NS-2 simulator. In the simulation, we used the same radio energy dissipation model as in [4]. The values of parameters used for simulation are as shown in Table 2. In the following experiments, we set that the percentage of cluster head number 3%, 4%, and 5%, respectively. We evaluated the energy dissipation of different categories of nodes in one round and the reliability with two kinds of strategies. Every result shown is the average of 100~200 experiments, and the confidence interval used in the simulation is 95%.
4.2. Energy Dissipation
The first experiment we do is to obtain the average energy dissipation of different category of nodes in one round. Here we divided a round into four phases as illustrated in Figure 6, which is little different from the phases we divided in Section 3.2. We can observe that in each phase the energy dissipation of each kind of node is different. It is due to adopting specific network and MAC protocol for different category in each phase. Now we will analyze the reasons to cause difference of energy dissipation for different categories.
The first phase in a round is the initial broadcasting. In this phase, all sensor nodes keep awake and broadcast/receive messages to collect information of whole network and the neighbors. Energy dissipation in here is the same for each category of nodes. As shown in Figure 6, lines representing varied category of nodes coincide in this phase.
The second phase in a round is the cluster formation phase. In this process, BNs go to sleep and do not join any cluster formation activities in order to conserve energy. CHs consume more energy than other nodes due to their high workload.
Third phase is the data transmission within clusters. BNs continue sleeping, so their energy consumption is 0. Because in this process TDMA MAC protocol is used, normal nodes only wake up in their allocated time slot to transmit sensed data. So the average energy dissipation of normal nodes is very low. Whereas CHs and SCHs keep awake during the whole phase and continuously receive data, this makes their energy consumption increased rapidly.
The last phase is the data transmission from CHs/SCHs to BS. In this phase we utilized a flexible MAC protocol as we have stated in Section 3.2.3. Nodes are divided into INs and normal nodes. Only nodes participating in data transmission keep awake, while other nodes go to sleep after declaring they are not INs. In this phase CHs (or SCHs), Ins, and BNs all wake up during their work time and turn to sleep after work and before the packets arrive. It is shown that BNs consumed maximal energy because nodes nearer to BS have high workload to transfer data.
Overall, CHs greatly have more energy consumption than other nodes in a round. This problem could be solved by electing CHs in rotation. It is suitable to the SCHs too.
It needs to mention that the timeslot for each phase marked in horizontal axis is not the exact one in a round. In reality, the period of data transmission within cluster occupied the most time in a round. In the experiment, we set the percentage of cluster heads is 4%. Because the trend is same for other percentages, it is not necessary to do the alternative experiments.
In this experiment, we can find that BNs greatly conserved energy by limiting their participations only in some specific phases (other time they should be in sleep mode). The amount of energy dissipation of BNs was reduced as little as the normal nodes. We compared mechanisms with BN sleep strategy and without BN strategy in different percentage of CHs. In Figure 7(a), the result shows that the average energy dissipation of BNs is decreased about 30%–50% through utilizing BN sleep strategy.
In Figure 7(b) we compared the average energy consumption of all sensor nodes in two mechanisms, respectively, with flexible MAC protocol and without. Flexible MAC protocol means the power control strategy we designed for respective phase. In phases of cluster formation and data transmission within clusters, BNs turn off radio and keep in sleep mode; in phase of data transmission from CHs to BS, only INs/BNs keep awake in their active time. The energy conservation amount by using this strategy reaches 25%–45%. It is noteworthy that, with the increase of percentage of CHs, the amount of energy saving declines. It is due to the number of paths of multihop data transmission from CHs to BS increases, correspondingly the number of joint INs increases.
In order to show the superiority of the performance on energy saving, we compared our proposed protocol with the clustering based protocols, LEACH and HEED. It should be noticed that the routing protocols of data forwarding from CHs to BSs are different in each work. In LEACH, the authors assume the CHs can communicate with the BS directly after data collection and aggregation, while in HEED, the authors utilized the TinyOS beaconing approach, which constructs a breadth-first spanning tree rooted at the BS. It is obvious that the former does not fit for the large-scale WSNs for sensor nodes cannot communicate with the BS directly when the distance increases, whereas the latter does not consider for the reliability and fault tolerance of data transmission. The strategies for improving reliability of data transmission also cause extra energy consumption because they require extensive message exchange. But by adopting more optimal CH selection algorithm and flexible MAC protocol, we also effectively decrease the energy consumption. We compared the network lifetime for three protocols when the number of nodes is 500 and 1000, respectively. The results are shown in Figure 8. The round number for the first and last node dies in each protocol are illustrated, which indicates the network lifetime. From Figure 8 we can observe that our proposed protocol extends lifetime above 140% than LEACH and 50% than HEED. It is because LEACH randomly selects cluster heads and HEED selects cluster heads based on the residual energy of nodes, whereas our proposed algorithm considers the residual energy, number of neighbors (density), and the depth to BS (distance to BS), so that the final cluster heads are well distributed across the network. The flexible MAC protocol also improves the capability of energy saving by turning off node radio when they are idle in the network, since it is well known that idle listening almost causes half of power wastes in wireless sensor networks.
4.3. Data Delivery Reliability
In this section we analyzed the reliability of data transmission when using different reliable strategies. As illustrated in Figure 9, with the increasing of node failure rate in WSNs, the average packet delivery ratio decreases correspondingly. Here, the reliability is represented by the probability that a message is successfully delivered, which is calculated as the total number of effective information received at the BS over the total number of effective information initiated from all the sensing nodes. Since we used data aggregation approach, the number of delivered messages cannot be used as the measure parameter. We prefer to use the number of effective information as the measure parameter of data reliability. The data delivery consists of two steps: delivery within cluster and delivery to the BS. The SCH strategy is designed responsible for the failure of data delivery within cluster while multi path routing strategy is designed for the fault tolerance during data delivery from CH to BS.
The faults in WSNs include two types of impact: the node failure and the link failure. In our simulation, we only considered the situation of node failure. It is because that the SCH mechanism is our original and creative strategy, which should be evaluated with high priority. The node failure is random, which includes the situation of either the normal nodes or the CHs (SCHs) fail. The situation of both CH and SCH in the same cluster that have failure simultaneously is also possible in this case. So this fault model is suitable for our research. In previous works [6, 7, 12, 14], the impact of multipath routing protocols has been fully discussed.
As shown in Figure 9, in the mechanism using both SCH and multipath routing mechanisms, the decrease of data delivery ratio is not significant; whereas the mechanism without SCH or multipath routing algorithm decreases very severely. The mechanism only with multipath discovery algorithm performs between the formers. It proved that both SCH approach and multipath routing algorithm are effective in improving the reliability of data delivery.
5. Conclusion
In the paper, we proposed a cluster-based energy-efficient and reliable mechanism for WSNs, which integrates the advantages of clustering hierarchical structure and fault tolerant systems. Based on the functionalities in WSNs, sensor nodes are classified into five categories. Each category executes specific network and MAC protocol and processing operations. Using this flexible strategy, our proposed mechanism provides maximal reliability, energy efficiency, and scalability.
It is worth mentioning that some strategies for reliability and fault tolerance cause extra energy consumption whereas strategies for energy efficiency also impact the performance of reliability. For example, the flexible MAC protocol decreases energy consumption greatly, meanwhile it is possible that nodes cannot wake up timely to participate network due to the power control algorithm. The tradeoff between the energy efficiency and reliability is a critical issue in the future. As future works the proposed mechanism will be evaluated in a real environment.
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subset: commoncrawl


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LAS VEGAS, Nevada – On Saturday, July 12 at MGM Grand Garden Arena, one of the most anticipated boxing matches of 2014 will take place. Light middleweight Mexican-superstar Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KO's) takes on Cuban-born sensation Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KO's) in a scheduled 12-round fight to be fought at a 155-pound catchweight.
As time draws nearer to fight time, both fighters seem to be amped up and ready to go. Alvarez's camp has repeatedly discussed how displeased they have been with the harsh words dished out by Lara. They have lashed back saying, "Come fight time, their fighter will make him eat every bad word he's spit out against their fighter."
It all started back a few months ago in March, immediately after Alvarez's dismantle of Alfredo Angulo (22-4, 18 KO's) in a fight that wasn't even close. He came back on the scene after his loss to undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr., more impressive than ever. Alvarez was clicking on all cylinders that night and won over his fight fans once again. It was pure satisfaction from his supporters.
It was a moment during the post fight interview when a stranger to most, Erislandy Lara, hopped up on stage and walked to the podium, intercepted the microphone from Alvarez and called him out in front of all of his die-hard fight fans in attendance. What a clever strategy and courage it took to do what Lara did. He is now in one of the biggest fights of his career.
Not many people in the sport of boxing knew who Lara was until that day, especially Alvarez's fans. Lara said, "Every fighter in my weight class has been dodging me, including Saul Alvarez. I'm 150 percent better than the Mexican icon and I can't wait to give him a Cuban boxing lesson. Alvarez is a hyped up fighter who is completely overrated and I will expose him on fight night."
Both Alvarez and Lara were the only two fighters to beat and knock down former champion Austin Trout (26-2, 14 KO's) in their fights against him. Many pundits thought that Alvarez closely pulled off a victory over Trout, but according to the judges and their lopsided scoring, most thought they must have been looking at a different fight.
When Lara faced Trout, it was his southpaw speed and quickness with unique footwork and his power that took over the fight. Most experts thought Lara's win was more satisfying than that of Alvarez. Lara also brutally beat Angulo as well, by TKO stoppage back in June '2013. He sent his opponent running back to his corner in retreat from a severely swollen intrusion over the eye from vicious head blows.
Many around the sport are aware that Alvarez is being tailored and groomed by Oscar De La Hoya and his Golden Boy Label. He is without a doubt their cash cow and they invest heavily in his fights. This will be his third pay per view fight put on by Showtime. It is no secret that Richard Schaefer, formerly the CEO of Golden Boy Promotions, recently resigned from his position because of the future directions De La Hoya is taking the company.
For several years Schaefer has been known for being the brains and mastermind behind the success of Golden Boy. The news broke throughout the boxing world that owner De La Hoya has rekindled his relationship with Bob Arum, founder and CEO of Top Rank Boxing, who Schaefer didn't want to have any business connections with. De La Hoya used to be promoted by Arum and his label early on his career.
Arum and Schaefer did not see eye-to-eye on anything of importance in boxing and because of that, they never developed a working relationship and have been at odds for many years.
Many around the sport also know that Cuban-born Lara is managed by Al Haymon. The name "Al Haymon" has become a very popular name around the sport of boxing. His stable of fighters, who he manages, is as potent as the sport itself. The list of fighters who camp out under his umbrella is nothing less than remarkable.
Schaefer's strong relationship with Haymon was a huge factor in his enormous success with Golden Boy. Anytime the two of them are working together, they seem to never have a problem headlining a big fight. As a manager, Haymon usually tells his fighters when and who to fight next and it seems they always obey. Pound-for pound king, Floyd "Money" Mayweather Jr., is also under that banner and his extraordinary ride to fame and fortune continues to lie in the hands of this manager.
This bout on Saturday night could turn out to be a slippery slope for Alvarez and the Golden Boy label in more ways than one. It's apparent that Schaefer's presence and connections in the sport of boxing will still be lingering over this fight, even though he's no longer De La Hoya's partner and right hand man.
So far, the betting odds slightly favor Alvarez. But if this fight goes the distance, it could end up in the hands of the judges. There is no stronger presence involved in this fight game than manager Al Haymon. His skills and expertise is known to be as solid as they come.
In the past, Golden Boy fighters usually gets the nod and favor with judges in close fights, but this time he doesn't have Richard Schaefer on his side. More than likely, Schaefer will be siding with Haymon and his fighters, which rumors have already surfaced that the two of them may be working together in the near future.
If the 23-year-old Alvarez comes out victorious against the slick southpaw Lara, it sets him up for some even bigger events; possibly with Bob Arums' light middleweight champion Miguel Cotto (39-4, 32 KO's), who just recently ventured up to middleweight and destroyed Sergio Martinez. That would be a popular matchup that would sell very easily to the public, especially now that De La Hoya and Arum are doing business again.
The flip side to this coin is, if the 31-year-old Lara defeats the younger Alvarez, he puts a huge cloud over the career of the Mexican superstar and possibly a damper over De La Hoya's new quest to run Golden Boy Promotions without Schaefer. This fight has been deemed by many as a pick'em fight. It could easily go either way. That's what makes this fight so exciting.
There is a lot riding on this fight—and like Oscar De La Hoya has mentioned, time and time again, that Lara is a very dangerous fighter for Alvarez. He said, "Had it been up to me, this fight would not be happening. Make no mistake about it; Erislandy Lara is a very dangerous fighter, that's why my hat goes off to Saul "Canelo" Alvarez for agreeing to take this tough fight."
Suggested Links
- Marcos Maidana: 'Did he crack Mayweather's May-Vinci Code?'
- Cotto vs. Martinez: Things are heating up as the fight draws near
- MGM Grand Las Vegas: The second home of Mayweather
- Manny Pacquiao: Did he put the big 'Dream Match' with Mayweather on Ice?
- Deontay Wilder: Is he the missing piece to the heavyweight puzzle?


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Wickham: I'm fitter than ever
by Stuart Vose
Striker ready to step in if needed.
Connor Wickham feels he's in the best shape of his short career going into the busy festive period.
The 19-year-old striker has made impressive contributions against Chelsea and Manchester United recently ahead of a busy Christmas programme.
Wickham replaced the injured Steven Fletcher at Old Trafford on Saturday and says he's ready to step in if needed.
That's thanks in part to an intensive training schedule which has seen the 19-year-old look sharp since returning to first-team action.
"Fletcher has been magnificent this season and it's up to me to prepare for a start if it comes," he said.
"Fletch is great – he scores goals and I'm not going to argue if I'm not starting. I have to put performances in and I think I'm doing [so]. That's all I can do."
He added: "I feel stronger and fitter than I ever have before. Not being in the squad made me determined to come back stronger.
"I think my performances this season have been much better than previous."
Sunderland play their final pre-Christmas game this weekend when they head to the south coast to take on Southampton.
The Boxing Day visit of Manchester City precedes a home clash with Spurs, with the Stadium of Light hosting Barclays Premier League action twice in four days.
And Wickham sees the festive period as a chance to get more action under his belt and further press his claims for inclusion at senior level.
"We've got loads of games coming up so maybe there will be an opportunity for me to get on or even start and score a few goals," he said.
"The team know we have to win a good few games now and get a run going. There's loads of games coming up and it's an opportunity to get points on the board."
Wickham added: "No game is going to be easy – we simply need to beat as many teams as we can.
"We have created enough chances to score goals, and if we can score goals we're going to win games."


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- Business News
- Trading And Investing
- sectors
- special features
- MV Education center
- Video
- t3 live subscriptions
AT&T lowers its data plans' cost-per-byte, but will most people notice?
Multi-billion-dollar conglomerate wants more money for a service that costs it next to nothing.
Verizon, AT&T, and the rest are starting to see texting revenue slump as users grow smarter.
Apple improves its mobile iOS by implementing some of Android's best features.
Minyanville's coverage of Apple's Keynote Presentation at WWDC 2011.


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Saturday, April 24, 2010
Tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera
I should have planted a tulip tree Liriodendron tulipifera in my youth. I've hankered after one ever since I first saw a magnificent specimen in the garden of The Wakes, Gilbert White's home at Selborne in Hampshire, about 40 years ago. It's a bit late to plant one now, because they take a decade to reach flowering size..... but on the other hand there is an old gardening adage that says that you should plant as though you're going to live for ever - so maybe I will. The handsome, cup-shaped flowers are usually carried high up on the tree, so you need binoculars or telephoto lens to admire them...
... but you can appreciate the unusual leaves from ground level. Each looks as though it has been snipped off at the tip with a pair of scissors. When they first emerge from the buds in spring they're on long stalks and the leaf is folded up the middle, lengthways, so each looks like a miniature flag - until the blade unfolds, rather like a book opening.
Liriodendron tulipifera is native to the eastern United States, where it grows to a height of 180 feet ............ not, then, a tree for a small suburban garden, but space isn't a problem when your botanic garden is digital.


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Counselor Education, Ph.D.
Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology
The doctoral program in Counselor Education at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi is at the forefront in meeting current needs in training counselor educators. The mission of the doctoral program is to add depth and breadth in the preparation of counselor educators and counselors for leadership positions, regionally and nationally. Graduates will meet the well-documented demand for counselor education professors as the program emphasizes research, teaching, and supervision. Graduates are employed as faculty at universities throughout the US.
Download the Doctoral Program Student Handbook (pdf)
Student learning outcomes
Students will demonstrate the knowledge and understanding of:
- Leadership roles in counselor education
- Advocacy methods, particularly with underserved populations
- Developing and teaching graduate level courses in counselor education
- Supervision theory, personal style of supervision, and the practice of supervision
- Evaluating counselor education programs through the use of CACREP standards
- Issues related to diversity, culture, multiculturalism, and multicultural competency
- Ethical and legal issues and codes of ethics in counseling
- Research paradigms and approaches used to conduct quality research investigations
- Designing research, both quantitative and qualitative
- Preparing and delivering scholarly presentations
- Writing for publication
- The identity of the counselor and counselor educator and the importance of one's involvement in professional organizations
- The importance of wellness and counselor self care including strategies to enhance one's well being
- The practice of counseling, including theory, techniques, strategies and methods of evaluation
The doctoral comprehensive examination, coursework using evaluation rubrics, individual development plans, and annual evaluations help assure that graduates meet knowledge-based requirements and satisfy student learning outcomes.
Admission Requirements
- You must fulfill the Counselor Education Doctoral Program admissions requirements.
- In addition, you must apply and be admitted as a graduate student in the College of Education. See the Graduate Policies and Regulations and the Graduate Admission page.
Degree Requirements
See the Doctoral Program Courses page for a complete listing.
Also visit the Course Catalog.
- Printable degree plan (pdf)
- Printable degree plan (xlsx)
The Ph.D. Program in Counselor Education is accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and includes that organization's highest standards of quality. Didactic and clinical training reflect national standards and provide graduates with experiences in school and community settings. A comprehensive research component, including doctoral mentoring in scholarly areas of inquiry, prepares students for their dissertation and provides opportunities to study major problems of practice.
Program Matrices
Doctorate in Counselor Education National Standards Matrices (pdf)
Rachel Perez


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Skydiving.com now has a network skydiving location serving Georgetown and Floyd County in Indiana. Call Skydiving.com at 1-800-617-7948 for details, free information and specials on skydiving in Georgetown, IN today!
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Organic vs. Inorganic Fertilizer
Both organic and inorganic fertilizers give the life producing elements it needs to your lawn. Photo Credit: Clearly Ambiguous
Fertilizer added to the soil gives crucial growth material to plant life. Between organic and inorganic fertilizer, it's important to understand that there is no fundamental nutritional difference between the two types of fertilizers. It makes no difference to the beet root where it absorbs its nutrients from. There are differences, however, and the following article will help to explain them.
Organic fertilizers are made from materials of living things. Animal manure, compost heaps, and bonemeal are examples of organic fertilizers. Unlike inorganic fertilizers, it cannot be utilized by plants until decomposition has taken place. In order for plants to use the nutrients, the soil has to break it down into simpler molecules. If you spread manure on the garden or flower beds in the spring, the plants won't be able to consume it until midsummer. If organic is your only source of fertilizer, then your garden could experience nutrient deprivation for short periods of time without the proper planning.
Using organic materials improves the soils structure. It can hold both nutrients and water, creating a slow release of nutrients over a longer period of time. An oversupply of nitrogen generates faster growth, but weakens the plant system. This leads to susceptibility from bacteria, fungus, and stress from heat, cold, and drought conditions.
Inorganic fertilizers are manufactured from nonliving elements. They are immediately available to the plants as a source of food. Without the use of this quick acting fertilizer, more than 50% of the food available on the world market would be eliminated.
Three problems arise from the use of inorganic fertilizers.
- Leaching happens when the fertilizer is washed below the level of the plant roots. Rain or irrigation water can wash nitrogen and phosphorus away, which will eventually pollute the ground water.
- The second problem associated with inorganic fertilizer is a burn effect it has on plants. Too much of this chemical can burn or dry out young seedlings. This usually happens on golf courses, where large areas of yellow grass are visible to the naked eye. A high amount of chemical salts weren't watered down at the time application.
- The last problem occurs over time; the soil can build up toxic levels of chemical salts. This makes it harder for the plants to stand up to drought, insect infestation, and drastic temperature swings.
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Skydiving.com now has a network skydiving location serving Hudson and Hillsborough County in New Hampshire. Call Skydiving.com at 1-800-617-7948 for details, free information and specials on skydiving in Hudson, NH today!
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Miami Dolphins LT Jake Long ranked No. 59 in NFL Network's top 100 players of 2012
NFL Network is in the process of ranking its top 100 players of 2012.
Miami Dolphins left tackle Jake Long made the list Wednesday night at No. 59. He was the first Dolphin named to the list this year.
The former No. 1 overall draft pick in 2008 dropped 31 spots from last years rankings. Long missed the first games of his career coping with injuries, which ultimately ended in December when he was placed on injured reserve and was forced to miss the Pro Bowl.
Long was ranked 28th in last year's top 100 along with linebacker Cameron Wake, and former Dolphins wide receiver Brandon Marshall.
Long (6-7, 317 pounds) has started all 62 games he played for the Dolphins including 14 in 2011.
The website is revealing its countdown weekly revealing 10 players at a time.
Twitter | @IzzyGould
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Phone | 954.372.5504


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To preface, this isnt an anti-GW post, more so a post regarding expectations.
This weekend, the store I was at had an Armorcast Baneblade in their case, and I asked the store owner how it compared size wise to the new Baneblade. He said that the armorcast was a hair shorter in length, and that the new model was slightly wider.
I was NOT impressed by the size of the tank. The box it comes in is huge, but the model itself...not so much. Maybe Im a victim of marketing or hype, but I was expecting to be bowled over by this model (I WAS thinking of possibly getting one eventually for my fledgling IG). I was expecting HUGE, especially because of the asking price, but Im thinking, "your kidding, right?" when I saw its diminutive size (Im used to Tamiya armor in 1/35th scale). I understand the detail, sculpting etc, but I'm thinking that if the GW model isnt much bigger than the Armorcast, the kit to me has lost it's luster. I was expecting something large enough to have structure points, someting to dwarf a Land Raider. Did I set myself up for dissapointment?
Does anyone know the dimensions of the actual GW kit? Is the shopkeep right?


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In the end, Martin Brodeur is still a goalie for the New Jersey Devils, Ryan Kesler remains a center for the Vancouver Canucks, Mike Cammalleri is still with the Calgary Flames, and Paul Stastny will be sticking around with the Colorado Avalanche for the time being. Four of the biggest names discussed in rumors over the past several days did not get dealt before the NHL Trade Deadline at 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
But Brodeur, Kesler, Cammalleri and Stastny can form their own little fraternity, because everyone else involved in the rampant rumors that dominated hockey discussions over the past several days did get traded. Twenty-five teams were involved in 20 trades featuring 26 NHL players, 12 prospects or minor-leaguers and 23 draft picks in one of the most entertaining trade-deadline days in recent history.
The biggest trade of the day was one of the first and the most shocking when the Tampa Bay Lightning sent Martin St. Louis to the New York Rangers in exchange for Ryan Callahan, their first-round draft pick in 2015 and a conditional second-round pick this year that will become a first-round pick if New York makes it to the Eastern Conference Final.
The trade was a stunner on many levels.
* It's a swap of captains on Stanley Cup Playoff contenders; the Rangers entered Wednesday third in the Metropolitan Division; the Lightning were third in the Atlantic Division. St. Louis led the Lightning with 61 points in 62 games after winning the Art Ross Trophy last season.
* Callahan, who is scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent after the season, was believed to be close to signing a six-year contract extension with the Rangers before negotiations broke down Tuesday over a no-trade clause; Callahan wanted one, but the Rangers didn't want to give it to him.
* St. Louis requested a trade to the Rangers, but Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman was under no obligation to grant that request, especially because he was pigeon-holed into negotiating with one team in an attempt to trade Tampa Bay's disgruntled captain.
* The trade happened on the same day Lightning star Steven Stamkos was cleared to return to the lineup after missing 45 games with a broken right tibia.
In an interview with TSN, Callahan admitted initial shock at the news he was traded. He said he thought he was going to re-sign with the Rangers.
"I truly thought that we'd work something out that worked for both sides," Callahan said. "I said all along going through this that I wanted to stay there and I wanted to get a deal done, and that was the truth. It's part of the business that unfortunately you have to deal with. We couldn't find a deal that worked for both sides, so I part ways from New York. I have nothing but great things to say about the Rangers."
St. Louis flew from Tampa to New York after he was traded and was in the Rangers lineup for their game against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Madison Square Garden.
"[St. Louis] has been one of the greatest players in the organization's history, but in the end we honored his request today," Yzerman said in a statement released by the Lightning.
That blockbuster did not stand alone Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Kings were particularly active, adding forward Marian Gaborik from the Columbus Blue Jackets and defenseman Brayden McNabb from the Buffalo Sabres. Forward Matt Frattin is the only roster player the Kings gave up in their trades Wednesday.
The hope in L.A. is that Gaborik, who was traded on deadline day last year, will provide some offensive pop to a lineup that needs it. The Kings are 27th in the NHL in goals this season (2.32 per game).
Injuries to his knee and collarbone have limited Gaborik to six goals in 22 games this season, but he's a three-time 40-goal scorer and a seven-time 30-goal scorer who may get the opportunity to play with Anze Kopitar.
"We'll see if Gaborik can fit into our type of game," Kings coach Darryl Sutter told reporters in L.A. "He should be fresh."
For a while Wednesday it appeared three of the bigger names on the market, forwards Thomas Vanek, Matt Moulson and goalie Jaroslav Halak, would not be traded. That would have been shocking considering all three are scheduled to be unrestricted free agents after the season and were on teams that are not going to the playoffs.
However, shortly after the deadline passed, news came in that the Sabres beat the buzzer in trading Moulson to the Minnesota Wild and Halak to the Washington Capitals, and New York Islanders general manager Garth Snow finally managed to move Vanek to the Montreal Canadiens.
Vanek, though, did not get the Islanders the return they had to be initially hoping for; Montreal gave them a second-round draft pick and forward prospect Sebastian Collberg. In acquiring Vanek from Buffalo on Oct. 27, the Islanders surrendered Moulson, a conditional first-round pick and a second-round pick.
In the end, the Islanders got 44 points in 47 games from Vanek, a second-round pick and Collberg in exchange for Moulson, a first-round pick and a second-round pick. Snow talked particularly glowingly about Collberg, but added it wasn't the type of deadline day he was expecting and this was the best trade he could make.
"We considered several different options," Snow said during a conference call with reporters. "It wasn't the same type of trade deadline as it had been in the past. This was the best offer we had received."
Sabres general manager Tim Murray, one of the most active leading up to the deadline, picked up forward Torrey Mitchell and two second-round picks in exchange for Moulson and forward Cody McCormick. Murray also acquired goalie Michal Neuvirth and defenseman Rostislav Klesla from Washington for Halak and a third-round pick.
Moulson should give the Wild some goal-scoring support as they head into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Neuvirth goes to Buffalo, where he and Jhonas Enroth likely will be the Sabres' goaltending tandem for the foreseeable future; they are signed through next season.
Halak, who can be an unrestricted free agent July 1, stabilizes Washington's goaltending depth and likely will be in a 1 and 1A situation with Braden Holtby.
"He's a good goalie and he can get hot," Capitals general manager George McPhee said of Halak when he spoke to reporters at Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Arlington, Va. "The objective was to try to upgrade the tandem and we did."
Dallas Stars general manager Jim Nill feels the same way after acquiring Tim Thomas from the Florida Panthers for Dan Ellis. It's a straight goalie-for-goalie swap, but the Stars clearly are getting the better end of this deal as they bring in a former Stanley Cup champion, Conn Smythe Trophy and Vezina Trophy winner to push Kari Lehtonen down the stretch and potentially into the playoffs.
Thomas was expendable after the Panthers acquired Roberto Luongo from the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday.
"Our team, our organization is serious about making the playoffs and making a statement in the playoffs, and I think this helps solidify probably the most important position on the team," Nill told the Stars website.
The Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Boston Bruins, Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils also feel they solidified some of their areas of concern heading into the final 20-game playoff push.
Detroit acquired longtime Nashville Predators center David Legwand in exchange for depth forward Patrick Eaves, forward prospect Calle Jarnkrok and a conditional third-round pick.
Legwand, a UFA at season's end, had to waive his no-trade clause to go to Detroit, but the forward who has played his entire 15-season career in Nashville, did so to go back home to Michigan, where he likely will take over as the Red Wings' top line center for the time being.
Henrik Zetterberg is out for the rest of the regular season after having back surgery. Red Wings general manager Ken Holland announced Wednesday that Pavel Datsyuk (knee) will be shut down for at least the next three weeks. Darren Helm sustained an injury Tuesday at New Jersey and his return date is not known. Stephen Weiss (groin) is out of the lineup with no return date in sight.
"With Zetterberg, with Datsyuk, with Helm, and with Weiss, the uncertainty of where we're at, we felt it was important to get a bona fide center," Holland told the Red Wings website. "The news in the last 48 hours, that all factored into acquiring a center. The one we acquired is a local boy, so if we want to keep him beyond this year, we think it's reasonable that can happen, because he had to waive a no-trade clause to come here. He wanted to come home."
Ottawa got a goal-scorer to play alongside Jason Spezza by picking up Ales Hemsky from the Edmonton Oilers for two draft picks.
The Penguins got some depth forwards in Marcel Goc from the Panthers and Lee Stempniak from the Calgary Flames, paying a combination price of two third-round picks and a fifth-round pick.
Boston added defenseman Andrei Meszaros from the Philadelphia Flyers, giving up a third-round pick to get a player who will bolster their battered blue line. The Bruins have been playing with four young defensemen (Dougie Hamilton, Torey Krug, Matt Bartkowski and Kevan Miller) because of injuries to veterans Dennis Seidenberg and Adam McQuaid.
Colorado picked up goalie Reto Berra from the Flames and he'll presumably take over as the backup to Semyon Varlamov. Jean-Sebastien Giguere has back problems, and the Avalanche aren't sure if they can rely on him should something happen to Varlamov.
Instead of trading Brodeur, the Devils acquired forward Tuomo Ruutu from the Carolina Hurricanes for forward Andrei Loktionov. Ruutu is owed $10 million over the next two seasons, but the Hurricanes reportedly agreed to pick up some of that cost as part of the trade.
"Our intention certainly was to get a top-nine forward with a lot of grit and competes, and has a habit of playing in big games," Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said, according to The Record. "We've played enough against him over the years and we feel good about him."
Follow Dan Rosen on Twitter at: @drosennhl
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Jul 29, 2008 12:31 PM
The only party dress you're ever gonna need costs less than a spa pedicure. (You're welcome.) This Latte Polka Dotty Dress ($35) is ruched all around the bodice for a flattering fit. Tiny brown polka dots and a pretty ribbon sash add a touch of whimsy to a very grown-up fit. Transitions seamlessly into fall with a turtleneck and tights.
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2012 - Pikes Peak Velo Supercross
Sept 8th - PPV Supercross
3 Comments
Cyclocross whoo hoo!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
CX season is just over a week away and nobody is talking about CX? Come on people!
Here's a topic for discussion:
Disc brakes. Yeah or meh?
No Disc
Submitted by Chad (not verified) on
No disc this year for me... This bike looks sweet and has made me want.
Disc Brakes
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on
Meh. Still a little heavy. I think opinions on this will be mixed for at least another few years.


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Boney James
presented by The Smooth Jazz Cruise
|Saturday, April 27, 2013
|8:00 pm
$40 Lower Tier
Boney James' legion of fans have scooped up over 3 million copies of his twelve albums (with eight of them going to No. 1 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Chart) and he is considered one of the most influential jazz artists of his generation. In 2010 Billboard Magazine named him The No. 3 Top Contemporary Jazz Artist of the Decade.
Even so, Boney James, who has four Gold albums, three Grammy nominations, a Soul Train Award and an NAACP Award nomination to his credit, says, "I am just a saxophone player whose music has several different influences. Jazz is only one of them."
His newest CD Contact - completely produced, arranged and co-written by James - is driven by the signature soulful grooves the world has come to expect from him, but with an added intensity. "I felt really inspired putting together the arrangements and producing the record," he says. "There are a lot of things happening right now in modern music. The title, in one sense, refers to me reaching across genres and creating music that I believe is relevant and fresh."
Boney James' last appearance at Rockwell Hall was a sell-out. Don't wait to get your tickets!


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Freshman - 2008-09
Earned wins as part of the Tide's Novice 8+ in dual meets against Tennessee and Kansas State and the tri-meet against UNC and SMU ... earned dual meet wins as part of the Tide's Novice 4+ against Kansas State .... helped the Crimson Tide's "A" Novice 8+ boat to a Gold Medal at the Hobbs Island Regatta ... part of the Novice 4+ that earned a Silver Medal at the Head of the Hooch Regatta.
Varsity rower at Lake Braddock Secondary School ... won the Golden Blades Award and Most Improved Athlete ... also a member of the cross country and track and field teams ... member of the National Honor Society and Spanish National Honor Society ... rowed for the Fairfax County Junior Club Team.
Full Name: Valerie Jane Vargas ... daughter of Doug and Laura Vargas ... her grandfather, Laird Sloan, competed in the 1956 Olympics in track and field ... exercise sports science major ... born June 3, 1990.


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hospice & palliative care
When your child is sick, you want to do everything you can to make him or her feel better. This can become even more important — and more challenging — when your child is faced with a serious or life-threatening illness. Bon Secours is here to help. Pediatric Hospice and Palliative Care Services are now provided to Bon Secours pediatric patients in partnership with Noah's Children.
Serving Children and Their Families for More than 10 Years
Noah's Children was established in 1997 as the first nonprofit, licensed pediatric hospice in central Virginia. In an effort to continue to offer and to expand the services provided to the community, Noah's Children became a service of Bon Secours Richmond Health System in September 2007. Noah's Children provides compassionate, high-quality nursing and medical care for children with progressive, life-limiting illnesses while also providing psychosocial, spiritual and practical support to the entire family.
Interdisciplinary Team
The Professional Care Team provides a family-centered care plan with involvement by physicians, pediatric nurses, social workers, speech, physical or occupational therapists, spiritual counselors and bereavement counselors. The primary goals of this team are pain and symptom control to enhance the quality of life for the child and family.
Referral and Eligibility
Anyone can refer a patient, but the child's primary physician must provide written orders for the services provided by Noah's Children.
Other Services
Noah's Children also provides Illness and Bereavement Support Services to include:
- Counseling services for individuals, families or groups
- Support groups
- Resource center and lending library
- Community outreach
The Hospice and Palliative Care Services provided by Noah's Children, in partnership with the health care professionals of Bon Secours Richmond Health System, can make a big difference in your child's quality of life. Programs like this have been shown to provide the best care possible for serious illness, reduce pain and other symptoms, increase patient and family satisfaction and ease the transition between hospitals and other health care settings.
For more information on Noah's Children, go to http://www.noahschildren.com/.
To make a donation to Noah's Children, click here.


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Posted by Will Lester on 02/14/2013 6:00pm PDT tags: photo
(Will Lester/Staff Photographer) The opening day of qualifying at the 53rd annual O'Reilly NHRA Winternationals in Pomona. Brandon Bernstein (Top Fuel), Gary Densham (Funny Car) and V Gaines (Pro Stock) lead first day qualifiers with additional qualifying sessions scheduled for Friday and Saturday.
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1 rooms apartment 30 m2
מספר אנשים מקסימלי2
חדרי שינה1
גודל30 מטר רבוע
Floor No.
- מטבח
- חדר הניתן לנעילה
- מותר להביא חיות מחמד
- מרפסת/ טרסה
- חניה זמינה
- עישון מותר
|52210 Općina Rovinj, Istria County, קרואטיה
|סוג נכס
|פרטי הזיהוי של מקום הלינה
|Acceptance rate
|Response time
|A few hours
|Calendar updated
|Check-in before
|עזיבה לפני
|מדיניות ביטולים
|View Details
The Positano Elegant Terrace was just that. We loved this place. We would love to live here! Everyone was so helpful with picking us up at the train and on the way on to Venice they drove us in to Naples to catch the train. This was our favorite place in the three weeks we stayed in Italy. It was heaven and the perfect honeymoon spot. Will definitely want to stay in one of their places again.
Awful! This apartment is managed by Interhome agency, and there is one surprise provided by them - cleaning fee. Then you are choosing a room you do not see any mentions about addition costs - only after reservation. We realized that we had to pay extra 66 EUR after getting booking confirmation.
It is a little bit unpleasantly, but then we came there we saw an absolutely dirty apartment - all the surfaces was covered with dust. And this is is AFTER 66 EUR cleaning! We spent a half oh a day to clean everything by ourselves.
More than that - there was not any blankets there. We asked a charwoman to bring us at least one, she promised to come with them in the evening but did not come and did not bring any.
We was needed to sleep under thin cover for sofa, and it was quite cold.
After all this they took money for cleaning from my credit card without my agreement and did not answer my mails with photos of dust in their apartment.
Don't book anything from Interhome!
Very nice, wellplanned, clean and nice villa. Big and well equipted kitchen.
the apartment is really well placed, right in the centre of Prague; you need just a minute to reach the old town square by walk, passing through one of the most turistic street of the city.
The guys at the reception did a good job, letting us enter our rooms some hours before the check-in time.
The apartment was really nice and well furnished, with everything necessary (i think more than necessary!!) for the trip: tiny but complete kitchen, living room with big tv, internet connection and so on...
We just had some troubles to sleep at night dued to some drunk hooligans lodged in our building that passed whole nights ringing every door bell in the palace, shouting, slamming doors and elevator cabin, from 4 to 6 a.m.; unfortunately non-smart people is everywhere...but this has nothing to do with the accomodation that has been really comfortable.
Thank you very much the appartement was perfect!
Everything was Great Perfect Location, Really Clean only reason i give it 4 Stars is the wifi in our room.. Well there wasn't any. Other then that it was Greeat Would Def stay here again
Everything was perfect! Really nice apartment and the location was really good. the aprtment was very clean and fresh and it included all things that you needed. Good kitchen-equipment, free internet and nice furnishing.
Nice and comfortable stay. It was clean and very very near to the beaches of cap d'agde and supermarkets and the baker was just a few stairs to go. By bus and train we discovered beziers and montpellier, this was easy to organize. The kitchen was well equipped! Unfortunaly the final cleaning was a bit expensive for our short stay in the 20m² apartment also the bed was not that good and the fridge was a bit noisy, but besides of that it was cheap of course.
Had a pleasant stay here for 4 days. Very centrally located apartment with restaurants, a bakery, a slaughter and an Metro right outside the door.
Some street noise and the apartment could need a major cleaning.
Location, Location!! The apartment is perfectly located in the historical old town of Sorrento so we were right in the centre of everything yet there was no problem with noise at night and we all slept soundly. The owner Giovanna was very helpful when we arrived and it proved to be an excellent centre from which we explored the Sorrento/Amalfi area. Note parking is not included and guests should be aware that parking in Sorrento is expensive, €20 per day! The recommended car park, Ulysess gave us 7 days for price of 6 ie €120 for the week.
- הבטחת איכות מקומות הלינה
- כל מארח מאושר טלפונית
- תשלום מאובטח


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Dec 2, 2013 8:22 AM
Benefit's Hydra-Smooth Lip Color ($19) cuts out the middleman and brings you flattering lip shades in an ultra-moisturizing formula. Because it's made with shea and mango butters, along with a dose of vitamin E, you won't need to add a lip balm after you brighten your smile. We mean, you can, of course, if you want to, but we think you'll be happy with your low-maintenance lip color routine once you add this stick to your collection.
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text: Home » Contact Contact We would love to hear from you and welcome all of your comments and suggestions. Feel free to use the information provided below or, if you prefer, you can use this form to send us your inquiry. Thanks again for your interest in our company. We look forward to doing business with you. Full Name* TitleCompany Name*Company Website*Company Address* Street Address City AlabamaAlaskaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareDistrict of ColumbiaFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginiaWashingtonWest VirginiaWisconsinWyomingArmed Forces AmericasArmed Forces EuropeArmed Forces Pacific State ZIP Code Telephone*Email* Enter your comment: Headquarters: PakLab 6080 Jericho Tpke Commack, NY 11725-2850 Phone: 631.543.2277 Locations: Chino, CA Batavia, OH Cincinnati, OH Orland, IN