Smart and networking underwater robots in cooperation meshes : the swarms ECSEL : H2020 project

The work presented on this paper is aimed to explain the role that unmanned underwater vehicles (AUVs/ROVs) plays in the ECSEL-H2020 SWARMS project. The main goal of the project is to reduce the operational cost and increase the safety of tasks assigned to divers in these operations. This will be achieved enabling the AUVs/ROVs to work in a cooperative mesh. The challenge is to design and develop an integrated platform (a set of Software/Hardware components), incorporated into the current generation of underwater vehicles in order to improve autonomy, cooperation, robustness, cost-effectiveness, and reliability of the offshore operations. The first demonstration of the project will be performed at PLOCAN (Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands) where these technologies will be validated on its first stage.Peer Reviewe

Welcome project : towards a new wave energy converter technology concept

Peer Reviewe

Expanding ocean-monitoring capabilities in the Macaronesia with unmanned mobile platforms

The Macaronesia is a vast area playing a key role in the East boundary of the Central North-Atlantic ocean-circulation system. Despite a significant research activity in ocean monitoring for decades using a wide range of observing systems and methodologies, the area is still under-sampled, mainly due access and coverage constrains, as well as the observation sustainability. Ocean gliders offer a new approach in terms of capacity and sustainability, allowing undertake ocean-monitoring in spatiotemporal scales hitherto unavailable. The present work shows preliminary results from the latest mission with buoyancy-driven and surface ocean gliders in the area, whose main goal focuses on to improve and expand ocean observation capabilities strengthening glider endurance lines between archipelagos, as part of the global ocean-observation strategy conducted by the Marine & Maritime Network (R3M), as regional contribution directly aligned with European and international initiatives and strategies in the North Atlantic basin.Peer Reviewe

Smart sensing interoperability platforms in the scope of Atlantos

This paper aims to demonstrate the capabilities of a Smart Cable which aims to convert any commercial non-PUCK-enabled sensor in a Smart PUCK-enabled device. Through this development, it can be easily integrated on a sensor web platform in order to access the data in real time, and so there is no need to rely on each sensor manufacturer to comply with Sensor Web Enablement standards. The results presented in this paper were acquired during some real field experiments performed between the 24th and 28th of September at PLOCAN facilities in Gran Canaria. During these days three Turner Designs Cyclops sensors were successfully integrated and tested in a mission using an observing surface vehicle such as the Wave Glider SV-2.Peer Reviewe

Leishmaniose en Equateur : 6. Note épidémiologique et entomologique sur le foyer de leishmaniose de Zumba

La région de Zumba se trouve au sud de la province méridionale amazonienne d'Equateur de Zamora-Chinchipe, considérée comme la seconde zone d'endémie leishmanienne de ce pays. Une enquête clinico-épidémiologique a été effectuée sur 83 patients en détection passive. De plus, tous les biotopes du foyer de Zumba, dont les habitations, ont été échantillonés, de février à septembre 92, pour la récolte des phlébotomes au piège lumineux et sur appât humain (2.547 phlébotomes récoltés). La faune anthrophile est pauvre et trois espèces seulement ont été observées. #Lutzomyia serrana est une espèce abondante piquant même de jour. #Lu. maranonensis est une nouvelle espèce proche de #Lu. nevesi. Lu. castanea, autre nouvelle espèce, est rare. La localisation de nombreuses lésions à la face suggère, au moins en partie, une transmission domiciliaire, pour laquelle #Lu. serrana serait un candidat-vecteur possible étant donné son omniprésence et son anthropophile. (Résumé d'auteur

Mitochondrial Function in Antarctic Nototheniids with ND6 Translocation

Fish of the suborder Notothenioidei have successfully radiated into the Southern Ocean and today comprise the dominant fish sub-order in Antarctic waters in terms of biomass and species abundance. During evolution in the cold and stable Antarctic climate, the Antarctic lineage of notothenioids developed several unique physiological adaptations, which make them extremely vulnerable to the rapid warming of Antarctic waters currently observed. Only recently, a further phenomenon exclusive to notothenioid fish was reported: the translocation of the mitochondrial gene encoding the NADH Dehydrogenase subunit 6 (ND6), an indispensable part of complex I in the mitochondrial electron transport system

The WHaD diagram: Classifying the ionizing source with one single emission line

The usual approach to classify the ionizing source using optical spectroscopy is based on the use of diagnostic diagrams that compares the relative strength of pairs of collisitional metallic lines (e.g., [O iii] and [N ii]) with respect to recombination hydrogen lines (e.g., H{\beta} and H{\alpha}). Despite of being accepted as the standard procedure, it present known problems, including confusion regimes and/or limitations related to the required signal-to-noise of the involved emission lines. These problems affect not only our intrinsic understanding of inter-stellar medium and its poroperties, but also fundamental galaxy properties, such as the star-formation rate and the oxygen abundance, and key questions just as the fraction of active galactic nuclei, among several others. We explore the existing alternatives in the literature to minimize the confusion among different ionizing sources and proposed a new simple diagram that uses the equivalent width and the velocity dispersion from one single emission line, H{\alpha}, to classify the ionizing sources. We use aperture limited and spatial resolved spectroscopic data in the nearby Universe (z{\sim}0.01) to demonstrate that the new diagram, that we called WHaD, segregates the different ionizing sources in a more efficient way that previously adopted procedures. A new set of regions are defined in this diagram to select betweeen different ionizing sources. The new proposed diagram is well placed to determine the ionizing source when only H{\alpha} is available, or when the signal-to-noise of the emission lines involved in the classical diagnostic diagrams (e.g., H{\beta}).Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publishing in A&

Dust observations of Comet 9P/Tempel 1 at the time of the Deep Impact

On 4 July 2005 at 05:52 UT, the impactor of NASA's Deep Impact (DI) mission crashed into comet 9P/Tempel 1 with a velocity of about 10 km/s. The material ejected by the impact expanded into the normal coma, produced by ordinary cometary activity. The characteristics of the non-impact coma and cloud produced by the impact were studied by observations in the visible wavelengths and in the near-IR. The scattering characteristics of the "normal" coma of solid particles were studied by comparing images in various spectral regions, from the UV to the near-IR. For the non-impact coma, a proxy of the dust production has been measured in various spectral regions. The presence of sublimating grains has been detected. Their lifetime was found to be about 11 hours. Regarding the cloud produced by the impact, the total geometric cross section multiplied by the albedo was measured as a function of the color and time. The projected velocity appeared to obey a Gaussian distribution with the average velocity of the order of 115 m/s. By comparing the observations taken about 3 hours after the impact, we have found a strong decrease in the cross section in J filter, while that in Ks remained almost constant. This is interpreted as the result of sublimation of grains dominated by particles of sizes of the order of some microns.Comment: Accepted by A&

Effect of the Fe Nanoparticles Generated by Pulsed Plasma in Liquid in the Catalyzed Ozone Removal of Phenolphthalein

We have synthesized, in this work, zero valent iron (ZVI) nanoparticles to improve the efficiency of degradation of phenolphthalein catalyzed by ozone in aqueous solution. The Fe nanoparticles were obtained using the pulsed plasma in liquid (PPL) method with water as the liquid medium. Such nanoparticles have a mean size of 12 nm and are composed of ~80% Fe0, while the rest are a mixture of Fe+2 and Fe+3 oxides. The degradation of phenolphthalein was carried on a glass reactor injecting a constant amount of ozone and introducing different concentrations of Fe nanoparticles to the system. When using pure ozone, the percentage of degradation of phenolphthalein measured by colorimetry after one hour of reaction was 84%. However, when Fe nanoparticles are used, such percentage can be as high as 98% in 50 minutes of reaction. Furthermore, the degradation rate constant was 0.0334 min−1 with only ozone and it can be as high as 0.0733 min−1 with Fe nanoparticles. Finally, the total mineralization of phenolphthalein was obtained by total organic carbon (TOC) determinations. It is shown that when using only ozone, we obtained a percentage of mineralization of 49% and 96% when using the highest concentration of Fe nanoparticles