Search results for: colour sensor

Authors: Mihaela Beregoi, Horia Iovu, Cristina Busuioc, Alexandru Evanghelidis, Elena Matei, Monica Enculescu, Ionut Enculescu

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Nanomaterials field is very attractive for all researchers who are attempting to develop new devices with the same or improved properties than the micro-sized ones, while reducing the reagents and power consumptions. In this way, a wide range of nanomaterials were fabricated and integrated in applications for electronics, optoelectronics, solar cells, tissue reconstruction and drug delivery. Obviously, the most appealing ones are those dedicated to the medical domain. Different types of nano-sized materials, such as particles, fibers, films etc., can be synthesized by using physical, chemical or electrochemical methods. One of these techniques is electrospinning, which enable the production of fibers with nanometric dimensions by pumping a polymeric solution in a high electric field; due to the electrostatic charging and solvent evaporation, the precursor mixture is converted into nonwoven meshes with different fiber densities and mechanical properties. Moreover, polyaniline is a conducting polymer with interesting optical properties, suitable for displays and electrochromic windows. Otherwise, polyaniline is an electroactive polymer that can contract/expand by applying electric stimuli, due to the oxidation/reduction reactions which take place in the polymer chains. These two main properties can be exploited in order to synthesize smart materials that change their dimensions, exhibiting in the same time good electrochromic properties. In the context aforesaid, a poly(methyl metacrylate) solution was spun to get webs composed of fibers with diameter values between 500 nm and 1 µm. Further, the polymer meshes were covered with a gold layer in order to make them conductive and also appropriate as working electrode in an electrochemical cell. The gold shell was deposited by DC sputtering. Such metalized fibers can be transformed into smart materials by covering them with a thin layer of conductive polymer. Thus, the webs were coated with a polyaniline film by the electrochemical route, starting from and aqueous solution of aniline and sulfuric acid, where sulfuric acid acts as oxidant agent. For the polymerization of aniline, a saturated calomel electrode was employed as reference, a platinum plate as counter electrode and the gold covered webs as working electrode. Chronoamperometry was selected as deposition method for polyaniline, by modifying the deposition time. Metalized meshes with different fiber densities were used, the transmission ranging between 70 and 80 %. The morphological investigation showed that polyaniline layer has a granular structure for all deposition experiments. As well, some preliminary optical tests were done by using sulfuric acid as electrolyte, which revealed the modification of polyaniline colour from green to dark blue when applying a voltage. In conclusion, new multilayered materials were obtained by a simple approach: the merge of the electrospinning method benefits with polyaniline chemistry. This synthesis method allows the fabrication of structures with reproducible characteristics, suitable for display or tissue substituents.

Keywords: electrospinning, fibers, smart materials, polyaniline

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Authors: Kaznah Alshammari, Thomas Beach, Yacine Rezgui

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Technological advances in the construction sector are helping to make smart cities a reality by means of cyber-physical systems (CPS). CPS integrate information and the physical world through the use of information communication technologies (ICT). An increasingly common goal in the built environment is to integrate building information models (BIM) with the Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor technologies using CPS. Future advances could see the adoption of digital twins, creating new opportunities for CPS using monitoring, simulation, and optimisation technologies. However, researchers often fail to fully consider the security implications. To date, it is not widely possible to assimilate BIM data and cybersecurity concepts, and, therefore, security has thus far been overlooked. This paper reviews the empirical literature concerning IoT applications in the built environment and discusses real-world applications of the IoT intended to enhance construction practices, people’s lives and bolster cybersecurity. Specifically, this research addresses two research questions: (a) how suitable are the current IoT and CPS security stacks to address the cybersecurity threats facing digital twins in the context of smart buildings and districts? and (b) what are the current obstacles to tackling cybersecurity threats to the built environment CPS? To answer these questions, this paper reviews the current state-of-the-art research concerning digital twins in the built environment, the IoT, BIM, urban cities, and cybersecurity. The results of these findings of this study confirmed the importance of using digital twins in both IoT and BIM. Also, eight reference zones across Europe have gained special recognition for their contributions to the advancement of IoT science. Therefore, this paper evaluates the use of digital twins in CPS to arrive at recommendations for expanding BIM specifications to facilitate IoT compliance, bolster cybersecurity and integrate digital twin and city standards in the smart cities of the future.

Keywords: BIM, cybersecurity, digital twins, IoT, urban cities

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Authors: Isaac Kayode Ogunlade

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Data acquisition (DAQ) is the process by which physical phenomena from the real world are transformed into an electrical signal(s) that are measured and converted into a digital format for processing, analysis, and storage by a computer. The DAQ is designed using PIC18F4550 microcontroller, communicating with Personal Computer (PC) through USB (Universal Serial Bus). The research deployed initial knowledge of data acquisition system and embedded system to develop a weather data acquisition device using LM35 sensor to measure weather parameters and the use of Artificial Intelligence(Artificial Neural Network - ANN)and statistical approach(Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average – ARIMA) to predict precipitation (rainfall). The device is placed by a standard device in the Department of Meteorology, Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA) to know the performance evaluation of the device. Both devices (standard and designed) were subjected to 180 days with the same atmospheric condition for data mining (temperature, relative humidity, and pressure). The acquired data is trained in MATLAB R2012b environment using ANN, and ARIMAto predict precipitation (rainfall). Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Correction Square (R2), and Mean Percentage Error (MPE) was deplored as standardize evaluation to know the performance of the models in the prediction of precipitation. The results from the working of the developed device show that the device has an efficiency of 96% and is also compatible with Personal Computer (PC) and laptops. The simulation result for acquired data shows that ANN models precipitation (rainfall) prediction for two months (May and June 2017) revealed a disparity error of 1.59%; while ARIMA is 2.63%, respectively. The device will be useful in research, practical laboratories, and industrial environments.

Keywords: data acquisition system, design device, weather development, predict precipitation and (FUTA) standard device

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Authors: José Alberto García Fernández, Zhimin Du, Xinqiao Jin

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Nowadays, data center industry faces strong challenges for increasing the speed and data processing capacities while at the same time is trying to keep their devices a suitable working temperature without penalizing that capacity. Consequently, the cooling systems of this kind of facilities use a large amount of energy to dissipate the heat generated inside the servers, and developing new cooling techniques or perfecting those already existing would be a great advance in this type of industry. The installation of a temperature sensor matrix distributed in the structure of each server would provide the necessary information for collecting the required data for obtaining a temperature profile instantly inside them. However, the number of temperature probes required to obtain the temperature profiles with sufficient accuracy is very high and expensive. Therefore, other less intrusive techniques are employed where each point that characterizes the server temperature profile is obtained by solving differential equations through simulation methods, simplifying data collection techniques but increasing the time to obtain results. In order to reduce these calculation times, complicated and slow computational fluid dynamics simulations are replaced by simpler and faster finite element method simulations which solve the Burgers‘ equations by backward, forward and central discretization techniques after simplifying the energy and enthalpy conservation differential equations. The discretization methods employed for solving the first and second order derivatives of the obtained Burgers‘ equation after these simplifications are the key for obtaining results with greater or lesser accuracy regardless of the characteristic truncation error.

Keywords: Burgers' equations, CFD simulation, data center, discretization methods, FEM simulation, temperature profile

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Authors: Musaab Mohammed Ahmed Ali, Vladimir Vodichev

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work deals with an universal control technique or single controller for linear and nonlinear stabilization and tracing control systems. These systems may be structured as SISO and MIMO. Parameters of controlled plants can vary over a wide range. Introduced a novel control systems design method, construction of stable platform orbits using derivative balance, solved transfer function stability preservation problem of linear system under partial substitution of a rational function. Universal controller is proposed as a polar system with the multiple orbits to simplify design procedure, where each orbit represent single order of controller transfer function. Designed controller consist of proportional, integral, derivative terms and multiple feedback and feedforward loops. The controller parameters synthesis method is presented. In generally, controller parameters depend on new polynomial equation where all parameters have a relationship with each other and have fixed values without requirements of retuning. The simulation results show that the proposed universal controller can stabilize infinity number of linear and nonlinear plants and shaping desired previously ordered performance. It has been proven that sensor errors and poor performance will be completely compensated and cannot affect system performance. Disturbances and noises effect on the controller loop will be fully rejected. Technical and economic effect of using proposed controller has been investigated and compared to adaptive, predictive, and robust controllers. The economic analysis shows the advantage of single controller with fixed parameters to drive infinity numbers of plants compared to above mentioned control techniques.

Keywords: derivative balance, fixed parameters, stable platform, universal control

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Authors: Mthiyane Pretty, Mitsui Toshiake, Nagano Hirohiko, Aycan Murat

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Among the most significant greenhouse gases released from rice fields are methane and carbon dioxide. The primary focus of this research was to quantify CH₄ and CO₂ gas using different 4 rice cultivars, two water regimes, and a recording of soil moisture and temperature. In this study, we hypothesized that paddy field soils may directly affect soil enzymatic activities and physicochemical properties in the rhizosphere soil of paddy fields and subsequently indirectly affect the activity, abundance, diversity, and community composition of methanogens, ultimately affecting CH₄ flux. The experiment was laid out in the randomized block design with two treatments and three replications for each genotype. In two treatments, paddy fields and artificial soil were used. 35 days after planting (DAP), continuous flooding irrigation, Alternate wetting, and drying (AWD) were applied during the vegetative stage. The highest recorded measurements of soil and environmental parameters were soil moisture at 76%, soil temperature at 28.3℃, Bulk EC at 0.99 ds/m, and pore water EC at 1,25, using HydraGO portable soil sensor system. Gas samples were carried out once on a weekly basis at 09:00 am and 12: 00 pm to obtain the mean GHG flux. Gas Chromatography (GC, Shimadzu, GC-2010, Japan) was used for the analysis of CH4 and CO₂. The treatments with paddy field soil had a 1.3℃ higher temperature than artificial soil. The overall changes in Bulk EC were not significant across the treatment. The CH₄ emission patterns were observed in all rice genotypes, although they were less in treatments with AWD with artificial soil. This shows that AWD creates oxic conditions in the rice soil. CO₂ was also quantified, but it was in minute quantities, as rice plants were using CO₂ for photosynthesis. The highest tillering number was 7, and the lowest was 3 in cultivars grown. The rice varieties to be used for breeding are Norin 24, with showed a high number of tillers with less CH₄.

Keywords: greenhouse gases, methane, morphological characterization, alternating wetting and drying

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Authors: A. Rifa’i, Y. Takeshita, M. Komatsu

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After Yogyakarta earthquake in 2006, the main problem that occurred in the first yard of Prambanan Temple is ponding area that occurred after rainfall. Soil characterization needs to be determined by conducting several processes, especially permeability coefficient (k) in both saturated and unsaturated conditions to solve this problem. More accurate and efficient field testing procedure is required to obtain permeability data that present the field condition. One of the field permeability test equipment is Constant Discharge procedure to determine the permeability coefficient. Necessary adjustments of the Constant Discharge procedure are needed to be determined especially the value of geometric factor (F) to improve the corresponding value of permeability coefficient. The value of k will be correlated with the value of volumetric water content (θ) of an unsaturated condition until saturated condition. The principle procedure of Constant Discharge model provides a constant flow in permeameter tube that flows into the ground until the water level in the tube becomes constant. Constant water level in the tube is highly dependent on the tube dimension. Every tube dimension has a shape factor called the geometric factor that affects the result of the test. Geometric factor value is defined as the characteristic of shape and radius of the tube. This research has modified the geometric factor parameters by using empty material tube method so that the geometric factor will change. Saturation level is monitored by using soil moisture sensor. The field test results were compared with the results of laboratory tests to validate the results of the test. Field and laboratory test results of empty tube material method have an average difference of 3.33 x 10^-4 cm/sec. The test results showed that modified geometric factor provides more accurate data. The improved methods of constant discharge procedure provide more relevant results.

Keywords: constant discharge, geometric factor, permeability coefficient, unsaturated soils

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Authors: Olagunju John Olusesan-Remi

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The study area Ijero-Ekiti falls within the Ilesha-Ekiti Schist belt, originating from the long year of the Pan-Africa orogenic events and various cataclysmic tectonic activities in history. Ijero-Ekiti is situated within latitude 7 degree 45N and 7 Degree 55N. Ijero Ekiti is bordered between the Dahomean Basin and the southern Bida/Benue basin on the Geological map of Nigeria. This research work centers on majorly on investigating the chemical composition and as well as the mineralogical distribution of the various mineral-bearing rocks that composed the study area. This work is essentially carried out with a view to assessing and at the same time ascertaining the economic potentials and or the industrial significance of the area to Ekiti-south western region and the Nigeria nation as a whole. The mineralogical distribution pattern is of particular interest to us in this study. In this regard essential focus is put on the mostly the economic gemstones distributions within the various mineral bearing rocks in the zone, some of which includes the tourmaline formation, cassiterite deposit, tin-ore, tantalum columbite, smoky quartz, amethyst, polychrome and emerald variety beryl among others as they occurred within the older granite of the Precambrian rocks. To this end, samples of the major rock types were taken from various locations within the study area for detail scientific analysis as follows: The Igemo pegmatite of Ijero west, the epidiorite of Idaho, the biotitic hornblende gneiss of Ikoro-Ijero north and the beryl crystalline rock types to mention a few. The slides of the each rock from the aforementioned zones were later prepared and viewed under a cross Nichol petro graphic microscope with a particular focus on the light reflection ability of the constituent minerals in each rock samples. The results from the physical analysis viewed from the colour had it that the pegmatite samples ranges from pure milky white to fairly pinkish coloration. Other physical properties investigated include the streak, luster, form, specific gravity, cleavage/fracture pattern etc. The optical examination carried out centers on the refractive indices and pleochroism of the minerals present while the chemical analysis reveals from the tourmaline samples a differing correlation coefficient of the various oxides in each samples collected through which the mineral presence was established. In conclusion, it was inferred that the various minerals outlined above were in reasonable quantity within the Ijero area. With the above discoveries, therefore, we strongly recommend a detailed scientific investigation to be carried out such that will lead to a comprehensive mining of the area. Above all, it is our conclusion that a comprehensive mineralogical exploitation of this area will not only boost the socio-economic potential of the area but at the same time will go a long way contributing immensely to the socio-economic growth and development of the Nation-Nigeria at large.

Keywords: Ijero Ekiti, Southwestern Nigeria, economic minerals, pegmatite of the pan African origin, cataclastic tectonic activities, Ilesha Schistbelt, precambrian formations

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Authors: Jenson George, Thoa Nguyen, Garth Sanewski, Craig Hardner, Heather Eunice Smyth

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Pineapple (Ananas comosus), with its unique sweet flavour, is one of the most popular tropical, non-climacteric fruits consumed worldwide. It is also the third most important tropical fruit in world production. In Australia, 99% of the pineapple production is from the Queensland state due to the favourable subtropical climatic conditions. The flavourful fruit is known to contain around 500 volatile organic compounds (VOC) at varying concentrations and greatly contribute to the flavour quality of pineapple fruit by providing distinct aroma sensory properties that are sweet, fruity, tropical, pineapple-like, caramel-like, coconut-like, etc. The aroma of pineapple is one of the important factors attracting consumers and strengthening the marketplace. To better understand the aroma of Australian-grown pineapples, the matrix-matched Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), Head Space - Solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), Stable-isotope dilution analysis (SIDA) method was developed and validated. The developed method represents a significant improvement over current methods with the incorporation of multiple external reference standards, multiple isotopes labeled internal standards, and a matching model system of pineapple fruit matrix. This method was employed to quantify 28 key aroma compounds in more than 200 genetically diverse pineapple varieties from a breeding program. The Australian pineapple cultivars varied in content and composition of free volatile compounds, which were predominantly comprised of esters, followed by terpenes, alcohols, aldehydes, and ketones. Using selected commercial cultivars grown in Australia, and by employing the sensorial analysis, the appearance (colour), aroma (intensity, sweet, vinegar/tang, tropical fruits, floral, coconut, green, metallic, vegetal, fresh, peppery, fermented, eggy/sulphurous) and texture (crunchiness, fibrousness, and juiciness) were obtained. Relationships between sensory descriptors and volatiles were explored by applying multivariate analysis (PCA) to the sensorial and chemical data. The key aroma compounds of pineapple exhibited a positive correlation with corresponding sensory properties. The sensory and volatile data were also used to explore genetic diversity in the breeding population. GWAS was employed to unravel the genetic control of the pineapple volatilome and its interplay with fruit sensory characteristics. This study enhances our understanding of pineapple aroma (flavour) compounds, their biosynthetic pathways and expands breeding option for pineapple cultivars. This research provides foundational knowledge to support breeding programs, post-harvest and target market studies, and efforts to optimise the flavour of commercial pineapple varieties and their parent lines to produce better tasting fruits for consumers.

Keywords: Ananas comosus, pineapple, flavour, volatile organic compounds, aroma, Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), Head Space - Solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME), Stable-isotope dilution analysis (SIDA).

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Authors: Carla Pérez-Chirinos Buxadé, Bruno Fernández-Valdés, Mónica Morral-Yepes, Sílvia Tuyà Viñas, Josep Maria Padullés Riu, Gerard Moras Feliu

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There is a long way to explore all the possible applications inertial measurement units (IMUs) have in the sports field. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of a new application on the use of these wearable sensors, specifically it was to evaluate a magnet-based timing system (M-BTS) for timing gate-to-gate in an alpine ski slalom using the magnetometer embedded in an IMU. This was a validation study. The criterion validity of time measured by the M-BTS was assessed using the 95% error range against actual time obtained from photocells. The experiment was carried out with first-and second-year junior skiers performing a ski slalom on a ski training slope. Eight alpine skiers (17.4 ± 0.8 years, 176.4 ± 4.9 cm, 67.7 ± 2.0 kg, 128.8 ± 26.6 slalom FIS-Points) participated in the study. An IMU device was attached to the skier’s lower back. Skiers performed a 40-gate slalom from which four gates were assessed. The M-BTS consisted of placing four bar magnets buried into the snow surface on the inner side of each gate’s turning pole; the magnetometer built into the IMU detected the peak-shaped magnetic field when passing near the magnets at a certain speed. Four magnetic peaks were detected. The time compressed between peaks was calculated. Three inter-gate times were obtained for each system: photocells and M-BTS. The total time was defined as the time sum of the inter-gate times. The 95% error interval for the total time was 0.050 s for the ski slalom. The M-BTS is valid for timing gate-to-gate in an alpine ski slalom. Inter-gate times can provide additional data for analyzing a skier’s performance, such as asymmetries between left and right foot.

Keywords: gate crossing time, inertial measurement unit, timing system, wearable sensor

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Authors: Hamed Rashid Sarand, Kemal Selçuk Öğüt

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Speed is one of the fundamental variables of road traffic flow that stands as an important evaluation criterion for traffic analyses in several aspects. In particular, varieties of speed variable, such as average speed, free flow speed, optimum speed (capacity speed), acceleration/deceleration speed and so on, have been explicitly considered in the analysis of not only road safety but also road capacity. In the purpose of realizing 'road speed – maximum speed difference across lanes' and 'road flow rate – maximum speed difference across lanes' relations on freeway traffic, this study presents a case study conducted on a basic freeway segment of O-2 in Istanbul. The traffic data employed in this study have been obtained from 5 remote traffic microwave sensors operated by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The study stretch is located between two successive freeway interchanges: Ümraniye and Kavacık. Daily traffic data of 4 years (2011-2014) summer months, July and August are used. The speed data are analyzed into two main flow areas such as uncongested and congested flows. In this study, the regression analyses were carried out in order to examine the relationship between maximum speed difference across lanes and road speed. These investigations were implemented at uncongested and congested flows, separately. Moreover, the relationship between maximum speed difference across lanes and road flow rate were evaluated by applying regression analyses for both uncongested and congested flows separately. It is concluded that there is the moderate relationship between maximum speed difference across lanes and road speed in 50% cases. Additionally, it is indicated that there is the moderate relationship between maximum speed difference across lanes and road flow rate in 30% cases. The maximum speed difference across lanes decreases as the road flow rate increases.

Keywords: maximum speed difference, regression analysis, remote traffic microwave sensor, speed differentiation, traffic flow

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Authors: Sara Tokhi Arab, Tariq Salari, Ryozo Noguchi, Tofael Ahamed

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Land suitability analysis is essential for table grape cultivation in order to increase its production and productivity under the dry condition of Afghanistan. In this context, the main aim of this paper was to determine the suitable locations for vineyards based on satellite remote sensing and GIS (geographical information system) in Kabul Province of Afghanistan. The Landsat8 OLI (operational land imager) and thermal infrared sensor (TIRS) and shuttle radar topography mission digital elevation model (SRTM DEM) images were processed to obtain the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference moisture index (NDMI), land surface temperature (LST), and topographic criteria (elevation, aspect, and slope). Moreover, Jaxa rainfall (mm per hour), soil properties information are also used for the physical suitability of vineyards. Besides, socio-economic criteria were collected through field surveys from Kabul Province in order to develop the socio-economic suitability map. Finally, the suitable classes were determined using weighted overly based on a reclassification of each criterion based on AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) weights. The results indicated that only 11.1% of areas were highly suitable, 24.8% were moderately suitable, 35.7% were marginally suitable and 28.4% were not physically suitable for grapes production. However, 15.7% were highly suitable, 17.6% were moderately suitable, 28.4% were marginally suitable and 38.3% were not socio-economically suitable for table grapes production in Kabul Province. This research could help decision-makers, growers, and other stakeholders with conducting precise land assessments by identifying the main limiting factors for the production of table grapes management and able to increase land productivity more precisely.

Keywords: vineyards, land physical suitability, socio-economic suitability, AHP

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Authors: Abdullah Alnutayfat, Alexander Sutin

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One of the most important types of renewable energy resources is wind energy which can be produced by wind turbines. The blades of the wind turbine are exposed to the pressure of the harsh environment, which causes a significant issue for the wind power industry in terms of the maintenance cost and failure of blades. One of the reliable methods for blade inspection is the vibroacoustic structural health monitoring (SHM) method which examines information obtained from the structural vibrations of the blade. However, all vibroacoustic SHM techniques are based on comparing the structural vibration of intact and damaged structures, which places a practical limit on their use. Methods for nonlinear vibroacoustic SHM are more sensitive to damage and cracking and do not need to be compared to data from the intact structure. This paper presents the Vibro-Acoustic Modulation (VAM) method based on the modulation of high-frequency (probe wave) by low-frequency loads (pump wave) produced by the blade rotation. The blade rotation alternates bending stress due to gravity, leading to crack size variations and variations in the blade resonance frequency. This method can be used with the classical SHM vibration method in which the blade is excited by piezoceramic actuator patches bonded to the blade and receives the vibration response from another piezoceramic sensor. The VAM modification of this method analyzes the spectra of the detected signal and their sideband components. We suggest the VAM model as the simple mechanical oscillator, where the parameters of the oscillator (resonance frequency and damping) are varied due to low-frequency blade rotation. This model uses the blade vibration parameters and crack influence on the blade resonance properties from previous research papers to predict the modulation index (MI).

Keywords: wind turbine blades, damaged detection, vibro-acoustic structural health monitoring, vibro-acoustic modulation

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Authors: Yongquan Zhao, Bo Huang

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Spatial, Temporal, and Spectral Resolution (STSR) are three key characteristics of Earth observation satellite sensors; however, any single satellite sensor cannot provide Earth observations with high STSR simultaneously because of the hardware technology limitations of satellite sensors. On the other hand, a conflicting circumstance is that the demand for high STSR has been growing with the remote sensing application development. Although image fusion technology provides a feasible means to overcome the limitations of the current Earth observation data, the current fusion technologies cannot enhance all STSR simultaneously and provide high enough resolution improvement level. This study proposes a Hybrid Spatial-Temporal-Spectral image Fusion Model (HSTSFM) to generate synthetic satellite data with high STSR simultaneously, which blends the high spatial resolution from the panchromatic image of Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI), the high temporal resolution from the multi-spectral image of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and the high spectral resolution from the hyper-spectral image of Hyperion to produce high STSR images. The proposed HSTSFM contains three fusion modules: (1) spatial-spectral image fusion; (2) spatial-temporal image fusion; (3) temporal-spectral image fusion. A set of test data with both phenological and land cover type changes in Beijing suburb area, China is adopted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The experimental results indicate that HSTSFM can produce fused image that has good spatial and spectral fidelity to the reference image, which means it has the potential to generate synthetic data to support the studies that require high STSR satellite imagery.

Keywords: hybrid spatial-temporal-spectral fusion, high resolution synthetic imagery, least square regression, sparse representation, spectral transformation

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Authors: Yongjiang Zhang, Kallol Barai, Umesh R. Hodeghatta, Trang Tran, Vikas Dhiman

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Detecting water stress on crops early and accurately is crucial to minimize its impact. This study aims to measure water stress in wild blueberry crops non-destructively by analyzing proximal hyperspectral data. The data collection took place in the summer growing season of 2022. A drought experiment was conducted on wild blueberries in the randomized block design in the greenhouse, incorporating various genotypes and irrigation treatments. Hyperspectral data ( spectral range: 400-1000 nm) using a handheld spectroradiometer and leaf water potential data using a pressure chamber were collected from wild blueberry plants. Machine learning techniques, including multiple regression analysis and random forest models, were employed to predict leaf water potential (MPa). We explored the optimal wavelength bands for simple differences (RY1-R Y2), simple ratios (RY1/RY2), and normalized differences (|RY1-R Y2|/ (RY1-R Y2)). NDWI ((R857 - R1241)/(R857 + R1241)), SD (R2188 – R2245), and SR (R1752 / R1756) emerged as top predictors for predicting leaf water potential, significantly contributing to the highest model performance. The base learner models achieved an R-squared value of approximately 0.81, indicating their capacity to explain 81% of the variance. Research is underway to develop a neural vegetation index (NVI) that automates the process of index development by searching for specific wavelengths in the space ratio of linear functions of reflectance. The NVI framework could work across species and predict different physiological parameters.

Keywords: hyperspectral reflectance, water potential, spectral indices, machine learning, wild blueberries, optimal bands

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Authors: Ian Jones, Jonathan Griffiths

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Laser welding offers the potential for making very precise joints in plastics products, both in terms of the joint location and the amount of heating applied. These methods have allowed the production of complex products such as microfluidic devices where channels and structure resolution below 100 µm is regularly used. However, to date, the dimension of welds made using lasers has been limited by the focus spot size that is achievable from the laser source. Theoretically, the minimum spot size possible from a laser is comparable to the wavelength of the radiation emitted. Practically, with reasonable focal length optics the spot size achievable is a few factors larger than this, and the melt zone in a plastics weld is larger again than this. The narrowest welds feasible to date have therefore been 10-20 µm wide using a near-infrared laser source. The aim of this work was to prepare laser absorber tracks and channels less than 10 µm wide in PMMA thermoplastic using EB lithography followed by sealing of channels using laser welding to carry out welds with widths of the order of 1 µm, below the resolution limit of the near-infrared laser used. Welded joints with a width of 1 µm have been achieved as well as channels with a width of 5 µm. The procedure was based on the principle of transmission laser welding using a thin coating of infrared absorbent material at the joint interface. The coating was patterned using electron-beam lithography to obtain the required resolution in a reproducible manner and that resolution was retained after the transmission laser welding process. The joint strength was ratified using larger scale samples. The results demonstrate that plastics products could be made with a high density of structure with resolution below 1 um, and that welding can be applied without excessively heating regions beyond the weld lines. This may be applied to smaller scale sensor and analysis chips, micro-bio and chemical reactors and to microelectronic packaging.

Keywords: microchannels, polymer, EB lithography, laser welding

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Authors: Dehni Abdellatif, Lounis Mourad

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The new approach of applied spatial geostatistics in materials sciences, agriculture accuracy, agricultural statistics, permitted an apprehension of managing and monitoring the water and groundwater qualities in a relationship with salt-affected soil. The anterior experiences concerning data acquisition, spatial-preparation studies on optical and multispectral data has facilitated the integration of correction models of electrical conductivity related with soils temperature (horizons of soils). For tomography apprehension, this physical parameter has been extracted from calibration of the thermal band (LANDSAT ETM+6) with a radiometric correction. Our study area is Oran region (Northern West of Algeria). Different spectral indices are determined such as salinity and sodicity index, the Combined Spectral Reflectance Index (CSRI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), emissivity, Albedo, and Sodium Adsorption Ratio (SAR). The approach of geostatistical modeling of electrical conductivity (salinity), appears to be a useful decision support system for estimating corrected electrical resistivity related to the temperature of surface soils, according to the conversion models by substitution, the reference temperature at 25°C (where hydrochemical data are collected with this constraint). The Brightness temperatures extracted from satellite reflectance (LANDSAT ETM+) are used in consistency models to estimate electrical resistivity. The confusions that arise from the effects of salt stress and water stress removed followed by seasonal application of the geostatistical analysis in Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques investigation and monitoring the variation of the electrical conductivity in the alluvial aquifer of Es-Sénia for the salt-affected soil.

Keywords: geostatistical modelling, landsat, brightness temperature, conductivity

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Authors: Winncy Du, Jeremy Nguyen, Harpinder Dhillon, Reinardus Justin Halim, Clayton Haske, Trent Hughes, Marissa Ortiz, Rozy Saini

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Stroke often causes death or cerebro-vascular (CV) brain damage. Most patients with CV brain damage lost their motor control on their limbs. This paper focuses on developing a reliable, safe, and non-invasive EEG-based robot-assistant stroke rehabilitation system to help stroke survivors to rapidly restore their motor control functions for their limbs. An electroencephalogram (EEG) recording device (EPOC Headset) and was used to detect a patient’s brain activities. The EEG signals were then processed, classified, and interpreted to the motion intentions, and then converted to a series of robot motion commands. A six-axis articulated robot (AdeptSix 300) was employed to provide the intended motions based on these commends. To ensure the EEG device, the computer, and the robot can communicate to each other, an Arduino microcontroller is used to physically execute the programming codes to a series output pins’ status (HIGH or LOW). Then these “hardware” commends were sent to a 24 V relay to trigger the robot’s motion. A lookup table for various motion intensions and the associated EEG signal patterns were created (through training) and installed in the microcontroller. Thus, the motion intention can be direct determined by comparing the EEG patterns obtaibed from the patient with the look-up table’s EEG patterns; and the corresponding motion commends are sent to the robot to provide the intended motion without going through feature extraction and interpretation each time (a time-consuming process). For safety sake, an extender was designed and attached to the robot’s end effector to ensure the patient is beyond the robot’s workspace. The gripper is also designed to hold the patient’s limb. The test results of this rehabilitation system show that it can accurately interpret the patient’s motion intension and move the patient’s arm to the intended position.

Keywords: brain waves, EEG sensor, motion control, robot-assistant stroke rehabilitation

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Authors: Ibrahim Obeidat

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Reaching a fully-connected network of mobile nodes in rural areas got a great attention between network researchers. This attention rose due to the complexity and high costs while setting up the needed infrastructures for these networks, in addition to the low transmission range these nodes has. Terranet technology, as an example, employs ad-hoc mesh network where each node has a transmission range not exceed one kilometer, this means that every two nodes are able to communicate with each other if they are just one kilometer far from each other, otherwise a third-party will play the role of the “relay”. In Terranet, and as an idea to reduce network setup cost, every node in the network will be considered as a router that is responsible of forwarding data between other nodes which result in a decentralized collaborative environment. Most researches on Terranet presents the idea of how to encourage mobile nodes to become more cooperative by letting their devices in “ON” state as long as possible while accepting to play the role of relay (router). This research presents the issue of finding the percentage of nodes in ad-hoc mesh network within rural areas that should play the role of relay at every time slot, relating to what is the actual area coverage of nodes in order to have the network reach the fully-connectivity. Far from our knowledge, till now there is no current researches discussed this issue. The research is done by making an implementation that depends on building adjacency matrix as an indicator to the connectivity between network members. This matrix is continually updated until each value in it refers to the number of hubs that should be followed to reach from one node to another. After repeating the algorithm on different area sizes, different coverage percentages for each size, and different relay percentages for several times, results extracted shows that for area coverage less than 5% we need to have 40% of the nodes to be relays, where 10% percentage is enough for areas with node coverage greater than 5%.

Keywords: ad-hoc mesh networks, network connectivity, mobile ad-hoc networks, Terranet, adjacency matrix, simulator, wireless sensor networks, peer to peer networks, vehicular Ad hoc networks, relay

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Authors: Lise Paesen, Marielle Leijten

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People diagnosed with probable Alzheimer disease suffer from an impairment of their language capacities; a gradual impairment which affects both their spoken and written communication. Our study aims at characterising the language decline in DAT patients with the use of congeneric elicited writing tasks. Within these tasks, a descriptive text has to be written based upon images with which the participants are confronted. A randomised set of images allows us to present the participants with a different task on every encounter, thus allowing us to avoid a recognition effect in this iterative study. This method is a revision from previous studies, in which participants were presented with a larger picture depicting an entire scene. In order to create the randomised set of images, existing pictures were adapted following strict criteria (e.g. frequency, AoA, colour, ...). The resulting data set contained 50 images, belonging to several categories (vehicles, animals, humans, and objects). A pre-test was constructed to validate the created picture set; most images had been used before in spoken picture naming tasks. Hence the same reaction times ought to be triggered in the typed picture naming task. Once validated, the effectiveness of the descriptive tasks was assessed. First, the participants (n=60 students, n=40 healthy elderly) performed a typing task, which provided information about the typing speed of each individual. Secondly, two descriptive writing tasks were carried out, one simple and one complex. The simple task contains 4 images (1 animal, 2 objects, 1 vehicle) and only contains elements with high frequency, a young AoA (<6 years), and fast reaction times. Slow reaction times, a later AoA (≥ 6 years) and low frequency were criteria for the complex task. This task uses 6 images (2 animals, 1 human, 2 objects and 1 vehicle). The data were collected with the keystroke logging programme Inputlog. Keystroke logging tools log and time stamp keystroke activity to reconstruct and describe text production processes. The data were analysed using a selection of writing process and product variables, such as general writing process measures, detailed pause analysis, linguistic analysis, and text length. As a covariate, the intrapersonal interkey transition times from the typing task were taken into account. The pre-test indicated that the new images lead to similar or even faster reaction times compared to the original images. All the images were therefore used in the main study. The produced texts of the description tasks were significantly longer compared to previous studies, providing sufficient text and process data for analyses. Preliminary analysis shows that the amount of words produced differed significantly between the healthy elderly and the students, as did the mean length of production bursts, even though both groups needed the same time to produce their texts. However, the elderly took significantly more time to produce the complex task than the simple task. Nevertheless, the amount of words per minute remained comparable between simple and complex. The pauses within and before words varied, even when taking personal typing abilities (obtained by the typing task) into account.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, experimental design, language decline, writing process

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Authors: Mark Andrew

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Geopolitical tensions are at a thirty-year high, and the pace of technological innovation is driving asymmetry in force capabilities between nation states and between non-state actors. Technology futures are a vital component of defence capability growth, and investments in technology futures need to be informed by accurate and reliable forecasts of the options for ‘systems of systems’ innovation, development, and deployment. This paper describes a method for forecasting technology futures developed through an analysis of four key systems’ development stages, namely: technology domain categorisation, scanning results examining novel systems’ signals and signs, potential system-of systems’ implications in warfare theatres, and political ramifications in terms of funding and development priorities. The method has been applied to several technology domains, including physical systems (e.g., nano weapons, loitering munitions, inflight charging, and hypersonic missiles), biological systems (e.g., molecular virus weaponry, genetic engineering, brain-computer interfaces, and trans-human augmentation), and information systems (e.g., sensor technologies supporting situation awareness, cyber-driven social attacks, and goal-specification challenges to proliferation and alliance testing). Although the current application of the method has been team-centred using paper-based rapid prototyping and iteration, the application of autonomous language models (such as GPT-3) is anticipated as a next-stage operating platform. The importance of forecasting accuracy and reliability is considered a vital element in guiding technology development to afford stronger contingencies as ideological changes are forecast to expand threats to ecology and earth systems, possibly eclipsing the traditional vulnerabilities of nation states. The early results from the method will be subjected to ground truthing using longitudinal investigation.

Keywords: forecasting, technology futures, uncertainty, complexity

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Authors: Abdulaziz Alsadhan, Naveed Khan

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In recent years intrusions on computer network are the major security threat. Hence, it is important to impede such intrusions. The hindrance of such intrusions entirely relies on its detection, which is primary concern of any security tool like Intrusion Detection System (IDS). Therefore, it is imperative to accurately detect network attack. Numerous intrusion detection techniques are available but the main issue is their performance. The performance of IDS can be improved by increasing the accurate detection rate and reducing false positive. The existing intrusion detection techniques have the limitation of usage of raw data set for classification. The classifier may get jumble due to redundancy, which results incorrect classification. To minimize this problem, Principle Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and Local Binary Pattern (LBP) can be applied to transform raw features into principle features space and select the features based on their sensitivity. Eigen values can be used to determine the sensitivity. To further classify, the selected features greedy search, back elimination, and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) can be used to obtain a subset of features with optimal sensitivity and highest discriminatory power. These optimal feature subset used to perform classification. For classification purpose, Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) used due to its proven ability in classification. The Knowledge Discovery and Data mining (KDD’99) cup dataset was considered as a benchmark for evaluating security detection mechanisms. The proposed approach can provide an optimal intrusion detection mechanism that outperforms the existing approaches and has the capability to minimize the number of features and maximize the detection rates.

Keywords: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Principle Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP)

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Authors: E. Farg, M. M. El-Sharkawy, M. S. Mostafa, S. M. Arafat

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Mapping water stress provides important baseline data for sustainable agriculture. Recent developments in the new Sentinel-1 data which allow the acquisition of high resolution images and varied polarization capabilities. This study was conducted to detect and quantify vegetation water content from canopy backscatter for extracting spatial information to encourage drought mapping activities throughout new reclaimed sandy soils in western Nile delta, Egypt. The performance of radar imagery in agriculture strongly depends on the sensor polarization capability. The dual mode capabilities of Sentinel-1 improve the ability to detect water stress and the backscatter from the structure components improves the identification and separation of vegetation types with various canopy structures from other features. The fieldwork data allowed identifying of water stress zones based on land cover structure; those classes were used for producing harmonious water stress map. The used analysis techniques and results show high capability of active sensors data in water stress mapping and monitoring especially when integrated with multi-spectral medium resolution images. Also sub soil drip irrigation systems cropped areas have lower drought and water stress than center pivot sprinkler irrigation systems. That refers to high level of evaporation from soil surface in initial growth stages. Results show that high relationship between vegetation indices such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index NDVI the observed radar backscattering. In addition to observational evidence showed that the radar backscatter is highly sensitive to vegetation water stress, and essentially potential to monitor and detect vegetative cover drought.

Keywords: canopy backscatter, drought, polarization, NDVI

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Authors: Ndumbe Eric Esongami, Manga Veronica Ebot, Foba Josepha Tendo, Yengong Fabrice Lamfu, Tiku David Tambe

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The prevalence and unpleasant nature of plastics pollution constantly observed on beach shore on stormy events has prompt researchers worldwide to thesis on sustainable economic and environmental designs on plastics, especially in Cameroon, a major touristic destination in the Central Africa Region. The inconsistent protocols develop by researchers has added to this burden, thus the morphological nature of microplastic remediation is a call for concerns. The prime aim of the study is to morphologically identify, quantify and forensically understands the distribution of each plastics polymer composition. Duplicates of 2×2 m (4m2) quadrants were sampled in each beach/month over 8 months period across five purposive beaches along the Limbe – Idenau coastline, Cameroon. Collected plastic samples were thoroughly washed and separation done using a 2 mm sieve. Only particles of size, < 2 mm, were considered and forward follow the microplastics laboratory analytical processes. Established step by step methodological procedures of particle filtration, organic matter digestion, density separation, particle extraction and polymer identification including microscope and were applied for the beach microplastics samples. Microplastics were observed in each sample/beach/month with an overall abundance of 241 particles/number weighs 89.15 g in total and with a mean abundance of 2 particles/m2 (0.69 g/m2) and 6 particles/month (2.0 g/m2). The accumulation of beach shoreline MPs rose dramatically towards decreasing size with microbeads and fiber only found in the < 1 mm size fraction. Approximately 75% of beach MPs contamination were found in LDB 2, LDB 1 and IDN beaches/average particles/number while the most dominant polymer type frequently observed also were PP, PE, and PS in all morphologically parameters analysed. Beach MPs accumulation significantly varied temporally and spatially at p = 0.05. ANOVA and Spearman’s rank correlation used shows linear relationships between the sizes categories considered in this study. In terms of polymer MPs analysis, the colour class recorded that white coloured MPs was dominant, 50 particles/number (22.25 g) with recorded abundance/number in PP (25), PE (15) and PS (5). The shape class also revealed that irregularly shaped MPs was dominant, 98 particles/number (30.5 g) with higher abundance/number in PP (39), PE (33), and PS (11). Similarly, MPs type class shows that fragmented MPs type was also dominant, 80 particles/number (25.25 g) with higher abundance/number in PP (30), PE (28) and PS (15). Equally, the sized class forward revealed that 1.5 – 1.99 mm sized ranged MPs had the highest abundance of 102 particles/number (51.77 g) with higher concentration observed in PP (47), PE (41), and PS (7) as well and finally, the weight class also show that 0.01 g weighs MPs was dominated by 98 particles/number (56.57 g) with varied numeric abundance seen in PP (49), PE (29) and PS (13). The forensic investigation of the pollution indicated that majority of the beach microplastic is sourced from the site/nearby area. The investigation could draw useful conclusions regarding the pathways of pollution. The fragmented microplastic, a significant component in the sample, was found to be sourced from recreational activities and partly from fishing boat installations and repairs activities carried out close to the shore.

Keywords: forensic analysis, beach MPs, particle/number, polymer composition, cameroon

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Authors: Michelle E. Taylor, Clare E. Morrall

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Microplastics are small particles produced for industrial purposes or formed by breakdown of anthropogenic debris. Caribbean nations import large quantities of plastic products. The Caribbean region is vulnerable to natural disasters and Climate Change is predicted to bring multiple additional challenges to island nations. Microplastics have been found in an array of marine environments and in a diversity of marine species. Occurrence of microplastic in the intestinal tracts of marine fish is a concern to human and ecosystem health as pollutants and pathogens can associate with plastics. Studies have shown that the incidence of microplastics in marine fish varies with species and location. Prevalence of microplastics (≤ 5 mm) in fish species from Grenadian waters (representing pelagic, semi-pelagic and demersal lifestyles) harvested for human consumption have been investigated via gut analysis. Harvested tissue was digested in 10% KOH and particles retained on a 0.177 mm sieve were examined. Microplastics identified have been classified according to type, colour and size. Over 97% of fish examined thus far (n=34) contained microplastics. Current and future work includes examining the invasive Lionfish (Pterois spp.) for microplastics, investigating marine invertebrate species as well as examining environmental sources of microplastics (i.e. rivers, coastal waters and sand). Owing to concerns of pollutant accumulation on microplastics and potential migration into organismal tissues, we plan to analyse fish tissue for mercury and other persistent pollutants. Despite having ~110,000 inhabitants, the island nation of Grenada imported approximately 33 million plastic bottles in 2013, of which it is estimated less than 5% were recycled. Over 30% of the imported bottles were ‘unmanaged’, and as such are potential litter/marine debris. A revised Litter Abatement Act passed into law in Grenada in 2015, but little enforcement of the law is evident to date. A local Non-governmental organization (NGO) ‘The Grenada Green Group’ (G3) is focused on reducing litter in Grenada through lobbying government to implement the revised act and running sessions in schools, community groups and on local media and social media to raise awareness of the problems associated with plastics. A local private company has indicated willingness to support an Anti-Litter Campaign in 2018 and local awareness of the need for a reduction of single use plastic use and litter seems to be high. The Government of Grenada have called for a Sustainable Waste Management Strategy and a ban on both Styrofoam and plastic grocery bags are among recommendations recently submitted. A Styrofoam ban will be in place at the St. George’s University campus from January 1st, 2018 and many local businesses have already voluntarily moved away from Styrofoam. Our findings underscore the importance of continuing investigations into microplastics in marine life; this will contribute to understanding the associated health risks. Furthermore, our findings support action to mitigate the volume of plastics entering the world’s oceans. We hope that Grenada’s future will involve a lot less plastic. This research was supported by the Caribbean Node of the Global Partnership on Marine Litter.

Keywords: Caribbean, microplastics, pollution, small island developing nation

Procedia PDF Downloads 186

Authors: Stephen Tullis, M. David DiDonato, Hong Sung Park

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Rowing boats (shells) are often steered by a small rudder operated by one of the backward-facing rowers; the attention required of that athlete then slightly decreases the power that that athlete can provide. Reducing the steering distraction would then increase the overall boat speed. Races are straight 2000 m courses with each boat in a 13.5 m wide lane marked by small (~15 cm) widely-spaced (~10 m) buoys, and the boat trajectory is affected by both cross-currents and winds. An optical buoy recognition and tracking system has been developed that provides the boat’s location and orientation with respect to the lane edges. This information is provided to the steering athlete as either: a simple overlay on a video display, or fed to a simplified autopilot system giving steering directions to the athlete or directly controlling the rudder. The system is then effectively a “lane-assist” device but with small, widely-spaced lane markers viewed from a very shallow angle due to constraints on camera height. The image is captured with a lightweight 1080p webcam, and most of the image analysis is done in OpenCV. The colour RGB-image is converted to a grayscale using the difference of the red and blue channels, which provides good contrast between the red/yellow buoys and the water, sky, land background and white reflections and noise. Buoy detection is done with thresholding within a tight mask applied to the image. Robust linear regression using Tukey’s biweight estimator of the previously detected buoy locations is used to develop the mask; this avoids the false detection of noise such as waves (reflections) and, in particular, buoys in other lanes. The robust regression also provides the current lane edges in the camera frame that are used to calculate the displacement of the boat from the lane centre (lane location), and its yaw angle. The interception of the detected lane edges provides a lane vanishing point, and yaw angle can be calculated simply based on the displacement of this vanishing point from the camera axis and the image plane distance. Lane location is simply based on the lateral displacement of the vanishing point from any horizontal cut through the lane edges. The boat lane position and yaw are currently fed what is essentially a stripped down marine auto-pilot system. Currently, only the lane location is used in a PID controller of a rudder actuator with integrator anti-windup to deal with saturation of the rudder angle. Low Kp and Kd values decrease unnecessarily fast return to lane centrelines and response to noise, and limiters can be used to avoid lane departure and disqualification. Yaw is not used as a control input, as cross-winds and currents can cause a straight course with considerable yaw or crab angle. Mapping of the controller with rudder angle “overall effectiveness” has not been finalized - very large rudder angles stall and have decreased turning moments, but at less extreme angles the increased rudder drag slows the boat and upsets boat balance. The full system has many features similar to automotive lane-assist systems, but with the added constraints of the lane markers, camera positioning, control response and noise increasing the challenge.

Keywords: auto-pilot, lane-assist, marine, optical, rowing

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Authors: Muhammad Zainuddin Arriafdi, Hamudah Hakimah Abdullah, Mohd Helmi Sani, Wan Azlina Ahmad, Muhd Nazrul Hisham Zainal Alam

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The biotechnology process development demands numerous experimental works. In laboratory environment, this is typically carried out using a shake flask platform. This paper presents the design and fabrication of a miniature bioreactor system as an alternative research tool for bioprocessing. The working volume of the reactor is 100 ml, and it is made of plastic. The main features of the reactor included stirring control, temperature control via the electrical heater, aeration strategy through a miniature air compressor, and online optical cell density (OD) sensing. All sensors and actuators integrated into the reactor was controlled using an Arduino microcontroller platform. In order to demonstrate the functionality of such miniature bioreactor concept, series of batch Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation experiments were performed under various glucose concentrations. Results attained from the fermentation experiments were utilized to solve the Monod equation constants, namely the saturation constant, Ks, and cells maximum growth rate, μmax as to further highlight the usefulness of the device. The mixing capacity of the reactor was also evaluated. It was found that the results attained from the miniature bioreactor prototype were comparable to results achieved using a shake flask. The unique features of the device as compared to shake flask platform is that the reactor mixing condition is much more comparable to a lab-scale bioreactor setup. The prototype is also integrated with an online OD sensor, and as such, no sampling was needed to monitor the progress of the reaction performed. Operating cost and medium consumption are also low and thus, making it much more economical to be utilized for biotechnology process development compared to lab-scale bioreactors.

Keywords: biotechnology, miniature bioreactor, research tools, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

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Authors: Julian Y. Raheema, Michael R. Hess, Raymond C. Provost, Mark Bilinski

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The world is rapidly moving towards advancing and utilizing artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics. The ground-breaking Boston Dynamics quadruped robot, SPOT, was designed for industrial and commercial tasks requiring limited autonomous navigation. Out of the box, SPOT has route memorization and playback – it can repeat a path that it has been manually piloted through, but it cannot autonomously navigate an area that has not been previously explored. The presented SPOT payload package is built on ROS framework to support autonomous navigation and mapping of an unexplored environment. The package is fully integrated with SPOT to take advantage of motor controls and collision avoidance that comes natively with the robot. The payload runs all computations onboard, takes advantage of visual odometry SLAM and uses an Intel RealSense depth camera and Velodyne LiDAR sensor to generate 2D and 3D maps while in autonomous navigation mode. These maps are fused into the navigation stack to generate a costmap to enable the robot to safely navigate the environment without causing damage to the surroundings or the robot. The operator defines the operational zone and start location and then sends the explore command to have SPOT explore, generate 2D and 3D maps of the environment and return to the start location to await the operator's next command. The benefit of the presented package is that it is much lighter weight and less expensive than previous approaches and, importantly, operates in GPS-denied scenarios, which is ideal for indoor mapping. There are numerous applications that are hazardous to humans for SPOT enhanced with the autonomy payload, including disaster response, nuclear inspection, mine inspection, and so on. Other less extreme uses cases include autonomous 3D and 2D scanning of facilities for inspection, engineering and construction purposes.

Keywords: autonomous, SLAM, quadruped, mapping, exploring, ROS, robotics, navigation

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Authors: Sherif Keddis, Mohamed Azzam, Norbert Schwesinger

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Harvesting mechanical energy from footsteps or other impacts is a possibility to enable wireless autonomous sensor nodes. These can be used for a highly efficient control of connected devices such as lights, security systems, air conditioning systems or other smart home applications. They can also be used for accurate location or occupancy monitoring. Converting the mechanical energy into useful electrical energy can be achieved using the piezoelectric effect offering simple harvesting setups and low deflections. The challenge facing piezoelectric transducers is the achievable amount of energy per impact in the lower mJ range and the management of such low energies. Simple setups for energy extraction such as a full wave bridge connected directly to a capacitor are problematic due to the mismatch between high impedance sources and low impedance storage elements. Efficient energy circuits for piezoelectric harvesters are commonly designed for vibration harvesters and require periodic input energies with predictable frequencies. Due to the sporadic nature of impact harvesters, such circuits are not well suited. This paper presents a self-powered circuit that avoids the impedance mismatch during energy extraction by disconnecting the load until the source reaches its charge peak. The switch is implemented with passive components and works independent from the input frequency. Therefore, this circuit is suited for impact harvesting and sporadic inputs. For the same input energy, this circuit stores 150% of the energy in comparison to a directly connected capacitor to a bridge rectifier. The total efficiency, defined as the ratio of stored energy on a capacitor to available energy measured across a matched resistive load, is 63%. Although the resulting energy is already sufficient to power certain autonomous applications, further optimization of the circuit are still under investigation in order to improve the overall efficiency.

Keywords: autonomous sensors, circuit design, energy harvesting, energy management, impact harvester, piezoelectricity

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Authors: Mohsen Adabi, Mahdi Adabi, Reza Saber

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The recent advancements in nanomaterials have provided a platform to develop efficient transduction matrices for sensors. Modified electrodes allow to electrochemists to enhance the property of electrode surface and provide desired properties such as improved sensing capabilities, higher electron transfer rate and prevention of undesirable reactions competing kinetically with desired electrode process. Nanostructured electrodes including arrays of carbon nanotubes have demonstrated great potential for the development of electrochemical sensors and biosensors. The aim of this work is to evaluate the concentration of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on the conductivity of gold electrode. For this work, raw MWCNTs was functionalized and shortened. Raw and shorten MWCNTs were characterized using transfer electron microscopy (TEM). Next, 0.5, 2 and 3.5 mg of Shortened and functionalized MWCNTs were dispersed in 2 mL Dimethyl formamide (DMF) and cysteamine modified gold electrodes were incubated in the different concentrations of MWCNTs for 8 hours. Then, the immobilization of MWCNTs on cysteamine modified gold electrode was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the effect of MWCNT concentrations on electron transfer of modified electrodes was investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV). The results demonstrated that CV response of ferricyanide redox at modified gold electrodes increased as concentration of MWCNTs enhanced from 0.5 to 2 mg in 2 mL DMF. This increase can be attributed to the number of MWCNTs which enhance on the surface of cysteamine modified gold electrode as the MWCNTs concentration increased whereas CV response of ferricyanide redox at modified gold electrodes did not changed significantly as the MWCNTs concentration increased from 2 to 3.5 mg in 2 mL DMF. The reason may be that amine groups of cysteamine modified gold electrodes are limited to a given number which can interact with the given number of carboxylic groups of MWCNTs and CV response of ferricyanide redox at modified gold do not enhance after amine groups of cysteamine are saturated with carboxylic groups of MWCNTs.

Keywords: carbon nanotube, cysteamine, electrochemical sensor, gold electrode

Procedia PDF Downloads 447