INTERNATIONAL IMPORTS AND THE SAFETY OF THE U.S. FOOD AND FIBER SYSTEM

The trend towards globalization has led an increase in the U.S. Food trade. Threats of bio-terrorism and safety of the agriculture production system have become larger concerns to U.S consumers and policy makers. This paper analyzes how agriculture imports have changed in the past years; and how the government has reacted to the vulnerability of the U.S. food supply system to bio terrorism and invasive pests. Changes in budgets for the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS), agencies who are in part responsible for the food security, were compared to the increase in imports to provide a gauge for the response of the Federal Government to these threats.globalization, food imports, food safety, bio terrorism, invasive pests and diseases, homeland security, APHIS, FSIS, Financial Economics, International Relations/Trade,

Planar Odometry from a Radial Laser Scanner. A Range Flow-based Approach

In this paper we present a fast and precise method to estimate the planar motion of a lidar from consecutive range scans. For every scanned point we formulate the range flow constraint equation in terms of the sensor velocity, and minimize a robust function of the resulting geometric constraints to obtain the motion estimate. Conversely to traditional approaches, this method does not search for correspondences but performs dense scan alignment based on the scan gradients, in the fashion of dense 3D visual odometry. The minimization problem is solved in a coarse-to-fine scheme to cope with large displacements, and a smooth filter based on the covariance of the estimate is employed to handle uncertainty in unconstraint scenarios (e.g. corridors). Simulated and real experiments have been performed to compare our approach with two prominent scan matchers and with wheel odometry. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate the superior performance of our approach which, along with its very low computational cost (0.9 milliseconds on a single CPU core), makes it suitable for those robotic applications that require planar odometry. For this purpose, we also provide the code so that the robotics community can benefit from it.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Spanish Government under project DPI2014-55826-R and the grant program FPI-MICINN 2012

A Primal-Dual Framework for Real-Time Dense RGB-D Scene Flow

This paper presents the first method to compute dense scene flow in real-time for RGB-D cameras. It is based on a variational formulation where brightness constancy and geometric consistency are imposed. Accounting for the depth data provided by RGB-D cameras, regularization of the flow field is imposed on the 3D surface (or set of surfaces) of the observed scene instead of on the image plane, leading to more geometrically consistent results. The minimization problem is efficiently solved by a primal-dual algorithm which is implemented on a GPU, achieving a previously unseen temporal performance. Several tests have been conducted to compare our approach with a state-of-the-art work (RGB-D flow) where quantitative and qualitative results are evaluated. Moreover, an additional set of experiments have been carried out to show the applicability of our work to estimate motion in realtime. Results demonstrate the accuracy of our approach, which outperforms the RGB-D flow, and which is able to estimate heterogeneous and non-rigid motions at a high frame rate.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Research supported by the Spanish Government under project DPI1011-25483 and the Spanish grant program FPI-MICINN 2012

Motion Cooperation: Smooth Piece-Wise Rigid Scene Flow from RGB-D Images

We propose a novel joint registration and segmentation approach to estimate scene flow from RGB-D images. Instead of assuming the scene to be composed of a number of independent rigidly-moving parts, we use non-binary labels to capture non-rigid deformations at transitions between the rigid parts of the scene. Thus, the velocity of any point can be computed as a linear combination (interpolation) of the estimated rigid motions, which provides better results than traditional sharp piecewise segmentations. Within a variational framework, the smooth segments of the scene and their corresponding rigid velocities are alternately refined until convergence. A K-means-based segmentation is employed as an initialization, and the number of regions is subsequently adapted during the optimization process to capture any arbitrary number of independently moving objects. We evaluate our approach with both synthetic and real RGB-D images that contain varied and large motions. The experiments show that our method estimates the scene flow more accurately than the most recent works in the field, and at the same time provides a meaningful segmentation of the scene based on 3D motion.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Spanish Government under the grant programs FPI-MICINN 2012 and DPI2014- 55826-R (co-founded by the European Regional Development Fund), as well as by the EU ERC grant Convex Vision (grant agreement no. 240168)

Online Estimation of 2D Wind Maps for Olfactory Robots

This work introduces a novel solution to approximate in real time the 2D wind flow present in a geometrically known environment. It is grounded on the probabilistic framework provided by a Markov random field and enables the estimation of the most probable wind field from a set of noisy observations, for the case of incompressible and steady wind flow. Our method delivers reasonably precise results without falling into common unrealistic assumptions like homogeneous wind flow, absence of obstacles, etc., and performs very efficiently (less than 0.5 seconds for an environment represented with a 100x100 cell grid). This approach is then quite suitable for applications that require real-time estimation of the wind flow, as for example, the localization of gas sources, prediction of the gas dispersion, or the mapping of the gas distribution of different chemicals released in a given scenario.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Philippines equity report: Investment case for financing equitable progress towards MDGs 4 and 5 in the Asia-Pacific region

A lack of maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) equity analysis in recent years has led to a substantive gap in the literature. Responding to this, we use the best available country data and the most advanced methods to investigate the levels and distribution of, and the trends in, both MNCH mortality and intervention coverage. The findings shed light on inequities between rural and urban populations, and between different ethnic groups, development regions and wealth quintiles. Analyses of mortality over time allow the backtrack of mortality progress, enabling the evaluation of past policies' influences on reducing health inequity and of the appropriateness of current and potential future policy. Hence, this Equity Report aims to constitute a milestone for MNCH equity analyses in the Philippines ..

Estudio de factibilidad para la cuantificación de la potencia sobre la antena helicoidal del experimento VX-CR en la generación de plasma

Proyecto de Graduación (Licenciatura en Ingeniería Electrónica). Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Escuela de Ingeniería Electrónica, 2012.Para este caso en estudio, la generaci on de plasma implica dos caracter sticas el ectricas: alta frecuencia y alta potencia. En el espectro radioel ectrico, las se~nales a tratar se encuentran en el rango de alta frecuencia o HF(por sus siglas en ingl es) con potencias que van desde los 800[W] hasta los 13[KW]. Se proponen tres m etodos para cuanti car la potencia dada a la antena helicoidal puesta en la primer etapa del motor VASIMR R , as como sus respectivas ventajas y desventajas en el ambito t ecnico y econ omico que han de ser tomadas en cuenta a la hora de su implementaci on. La alta frecuencia o HF, introduce t ecnicas m as complejas dentro del an alisis e implementaci on, por ejemplo: los efectos de la capacitancia a tomar en cuenta en el factor de acople entre circuitos de una etapa y otra, an alisis de redes por medio de par ametros S y Z, t ecnicas para la fabricaci on de circuitos impresos con las cuales reducir la interferencia y mejorar el acople entre las distintas secciones del circuito

Looking for students' enthusiasm: flipped classroom

The “flipped classroom” is a pedagogical model that consists of putting certain learning processes outside the classroom so that the teacher can devote more class time to students’ acquisition of practical skills, for example. In this way, the teacher is not limited to the transmission of course content, but in addition assumes the role of a mediator in the cognitive process, allowing students to actively construct their own knowledge. In this role, the teacher’s main task is to encourage students to become independent learners. This paper describes the implementation and initial results of the application of the flipped classroom in higher education. This study is part of a larger research project to improve our students’ motivation through the use of the flipped learning. The sample consisted of about 3000 students taking 17 different subjects, in Management and Administration Business, Finance and Accounting, Marketing and Market Research, and Chemistry, at the University of Málaga, and in Accounting and Administration, Business Communication and Marketing at the Polytechnic of Porto. According to our results, students’ motivation and class attendance increased with the application of this model; a comparison of the final exam results from two years with traditional classes and from two years with flipped learning shows that the proportion of students failing the exam decreased, which confirms that the use of this pedagogic model improves student learning.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. This project is financed by Educational Innovation Projects 2017-2019 from Malaga University

Gamificacion in education and active methodologies at Higher education

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in applying Gamification in Education, which can be defined as the application of game design elements to learning activities. Its purpose is to motivate students by creating an engaging learning experience that can keep students focused on the learning task and its application in the classroom, is still in its emergent stages. Gamification is a great challenge for education, particularly in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in such a traditional context, as is the case with courses like Management and Administration Business, Finance and Accounting, Marketing and Market Research, Chemistry, Accounting and Administration and Business Communication. This paper presents a study, applied in the 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 academic years, in which the teaching method focuses on a blended learning approach, through the implementation of a flipped classroom model and also through the introduction of online gamification activities such Kahoot! application. Kahoot is a game-based learning platform, used as educational technology that can easily be used for initial, formative and summative assessment of students’ knowledge using individual or collaborative team work mode, adding vitality, student engagement, and also meta-cognitive supports to higher education classrooms with limited instructor or student training required. The participants, in the study, were about 3 000 students of 17 different subjects from the aforementioned courses, of the Malaga University and Polytechnic of Porto. The results of this study suggest that this model improves student learning and are of relevance to researchers, educators and game-based learning designers.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Reformulation of the symmetries of first-order general relativity

We report a new internal gauge symmetry of the n-dimensional Palatini action with cosmological term (n>3) that is the generalization of three-dimensional local translations. This symmetry is obtained through the direct application of the converse of Noether's second theorem on the theory under consideration. We show that diffeomorphisms can be expressed as linear combinations of it and local Lorentz transformations with field-dependent parameters up to terms involving the variational derivatives of the action. As a result, the new internal symmetry together with local Lorentz transformations can be adopted as the fundamental gauge symmetries of general relativity. Although their gauge algebra is open in general, it allows us to recover, without resorting to the equations of motion, the very well-known Lie algebra satisfied by translations and Lorentz transformations in three dimensions. We also report the analog of the new gauge symmetry for the Holst action with cosmological term, finding that it explicitly depends on the Immirzi parameter. The same result concerning its relation to diffeomorphisms and the open character of the gauge algebra also hold in this case. Finally, we consider the non-minimal coupling of a scalar field to gravity in n dimensions and establish that the new gauge symmetry is affected by this matter field. Our results indicate that general relativity in dimension greater than three can be thought of as a gauge theory.We thank Alejandro Perez, Carlo Rovelli, José D Vergara, and José A Zapata for their valuable comments. This work was supported in part by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT), México, Grant No. 237004-F