An Android Based Mobile Robot for Monitoring and Surveillance

(Application Programming Interfaces) that is provided for the operating system. However, the building cost for the robot with a smartphone is greatly reduced. The robot can be remotely controlled using the wifi module and a microcontroller, smart phone interface embedded on the robot. The camera on the robot is used to capture and record real time video from the robot. The robot can be controlled based on visual feedback from the same smartphone. The four wheeled dc motors help to navigate the robot and ultrasonic sensor to avoid obstacles. The camera is attached to the wifi robot link which enables it to capture the environment or any object of concern. Experimental results with varied positions of obstacle show the flexibility of the robot to avoid it and have shown a decent performance and it is getting a communication range of nearly 50m, which is good enough for many surveillance applications

Identification of Tsetse (Glossina spp.) using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time of flight mass spectrometry

Glossina (G.) spp. (Diptera: Glossinidae), known as tsetse flies, are vectors of African trypanosomes that cause sleeping sickness in humans and nagana in domestic livestock. Knowledge on tsetse distribution and accurate species identification help identify potential vector intervention sites. Morphological species identification of tsetse is challenging and sometimes not accurate. The matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI TOF MS) technique, already standardised for microbial identification, could become a standard method for tsetse fly diagnostics. Therefore, a unique spectra reference database was created for five lab-reared species of riverine-, savannah- and forest- type tsetse flies and incorporated with the commercial Biotyper 3.0 database. The standard formic acid/acetonitrile extraction of male and female whole insects and their body parts (head, thorax, abdomen, wings and legs) was used to obtain the flies' proteins. The computed composite correlation index and cluster analysis revealed the suitability of any tsetse body part for a rapid taxonomical identification. Phyloproteomic analysis revealed that the peak patterns of G. brevipalpis differed greatly from the other tsetse. This outcome was comparable to previous theories that they might be considered as a sister group to other tsetse spp. Freshly extracted samples were found to be matched at the species level. However, sex differentiation proved to be less reliable. Similarly processed samples of the common house fly Musca domestica (Diptera: Muscidae; strain: Lei) did not yield any match with the tsetse reference database. The inclusion of additional strains of morphologically defined wild caught flies of known origin and the availability of large-scale mass spectrometry data could facilitate rapid tsetse species identification in the futur

Disclosing the Loan officer's role in microfinance development

The financial exclusion of the developing country poor requires radically enterprising solutions. Hence microfinance originally aspired to intermediate through unique double bottom line initiatives which would supply more appropriate credit, then other ‘financial services’, in an essentially participatory, bottom-up way. This would simultaneously support local small scale economic activity while enhancing well-being and social/gender justice. However the frontline local officers originally recruited into microfinance institutions to help ‘empower’ the poor towards this end later adopted unexpectedly different roles. Using original data from Zambia this paper examines how this occurred in a frontier field situation. Here loan officers performed multiple, ambiguous, and changeable roles while their home institution first sought to decouple, and then prioritized its own immediate survival over its other founding aspirations. As they acted more like ‘loan repayment agents’ and ‘debt collectors’ than genuinely participative ‘facilitators’ supporting the poor, further, unintended consequences resulted. Any further decoupling and retreat from committed double bottom line working could bear heavily upon microfinance’s further/future development prospects

Social learning and social transmission of foraging information in Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Adult male Norway rats were tested in a first experiment to see whether foraging efficiency could be improved by social learning. Observers were placed in one of four conditions in which they were paired with demonstrators that either had or had not been previously trained to dig for buried carrot pieces, and in which the demonstrators either did or did not have carrot buried in the experimental enclosure. Observers in the group with trained demonstrators that did have carrot pieces buried in the experimental area during the observation period subsequently unearthed more buried carrot, did so more rapidly, and were generally more active than were the observers in the other three groups. In a second experiment, chains of transmission were established by allowing each observer to act as a demonstrator for the next naive observer. Enhanced levels of digging behavior were maintained across eight transmission episodes in three transmission groups relative to a no-transmission control group, the performance levels becoming stable after five transmission episodes at a level significantly above that of the control group. The study demonstrates that social learning and transmission mechanisms exist which might result in the diffusion of certain patterns of behavior through populations of Norway rats.</p