Distributed Route Planning Using Partial Map Building

Our goal is to manipulate and guide an object across an unknown environment toward a goal in a known location in space. Our tools include a system of manipulation robots, which are blind and one mobile scout robot who relies on a series of sonar sensors for information about the environment. Previous solutions to this problem have taken a simultaneous guiding and manipulating approach, moving the whole system under the scout\u27s guidance. My approach, however, presents a separate scouting algorithm that can return a series of coordinates through which the manipulation system can safely pass to reach the goal in a static environment. This new approach produces more optimal paths to the goal, as well as evading the concern of what actions to take should the entire system reach a dead end. In this paper I will present both the algorithm and the experimental results I obtained when I built the scouting system

Protein Activity Sensing in Bacteria in Regulating Metabolism and Motility

Bacteria have evolved complex sensing and signaling systems to react to their changing environments, most of which are present in all domains of life. Canonical bacterial sensing and signaling modules, such as membrane-bound ligand-binding receptors and kinases, are very well described. However, there are distinct sensing mechanisms in bacteria that are less studied. For instance, the sensing of internal or external cues can also be mediated by changes in protein conformation, which can either be implicated in enzymatic reactions, transport channel formation or other important cellular functions. These activities can then feed into pathways of characterized kinases, which translocate the information to the DNA or other response units. This type of bacterial sensory activity has previously been termed protein activity sensing. In this review, we highlight the recent findings about this non-canonical sensory mechanism, as well as its involvement in metabolic functions and bacterial motility. Additionally, we explore some of the specific proteins and protein-protein interactions that mediate protein activity sensing and their downstream effects. The complex sensory activities covered in this review are important for bacterial navigation and gene regulation in their dynamic environment, be it host-associated, in microbial communities or free-living

Surviving the Information Explosion: How People Find Their Electronic Information

We report on a study of how people look for information within email, files, and the Web. When locating a document or searching for a specific answer, people relied on their contextual knowledge of their information target to help them find it, often associating the target with a specific document. They appeared to prefer to use this contextual information as a guide in navigating locally in small steps to the desired document rather than directly jumping to their target. We found this behavior was especially true for people with unstructured information organization. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of personal information management tools

Multi-domain sketch understanding

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-128).by Christine J. Alvarado.Ph.D

Bringing the computer into early stages of mechanical design

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. 103-104).by Christine J. Alvarado.S.M

Revisión sistemática de la literatura sobre los principales factores de fidelización al cliente en América Latina en los últimos 10 años

Este artículo brinda una revisión sistemática de la literatura con el objetivo de investigar y analizar los principales factores de fidelización al cliente en américa latina en los últimos 10 años. Para la elaboración de este trabajo se ha recolectado información de dos fuentes académicas prestigiosas, tales como EBSCO y ProQuest. De los 40 artículos seleccionados son de tipo de documento: artículos científicos, tesis, libros entre otros; determinando así trabajar con 28 artículos relacionados al tema de investigación en los últimos 10 años. Asimismo, en una revisión sistemática de la literatura el objetivo es saber qué es lo que sabemos hasta el momento y qué es lo que se ha investigado sobre los principales factores de fidelización al cliente en américa latina en los últimos 10 años. Finalmente, de los artículos considerados podemos resumir que en estos años las empresas han ido evolucionando en el desarrollo y mejoras de fidelización hacia los clientes, ya que la lealtad de sus clientes es una pieza clave para el rendimiento de una empresa, es por ello que hoy por hoy no es suficiente el ofrecimiento de productos innovadores y de calidad, esto obedece a que los programas de fidelización sean contemplados como herramientas de diferenciación para perseguir una relación a largo plazo con sus clientes

Plan de negocios para determinar la viabilidad de la estancia de d?a Cabellos de Plata para adultos mayores en los NSE B y C de Lima Metropolitana

Las Casas de Guarda: Cabellos de Plata son estancias de d?a que se encuentran equipadas para recibir a adultos mayores (AM) autovalentes en horarios que van desde las 8am hasta las 6pm, a trav?s de un formato colaborativo que se desarrolla, simult?neamente, en cuatro distritos de Lima Metropolitana y que procura el envejecimiento activo de los adultos mayores asistentes a trav?s de actividades controladas con fines sociales, psicomotrices, f?sicos y relajamiento. Este servicio se caracteriza por hacer hincapi? en la seguridad de los clientes- a trav?s del uso constante de brazaletes gps y c?maras de seguridad con transmisi?n en tiempo real, as? como en la tranquilidad de sus parientes a cargo- quienes podr?n monitorear constantemente las actividades que sus AM realizan. Asimismo, las Casas cuentan con personal altamente calificado, constantemente capacitado y evaluado, con la finalidad de asegurar la mejor experiencia en nuestras instalaciones y en la de nuestros socios colaborativos. Parte de los servicios pueden incluir la movilidad para trasladarlos desde sus hogares- siempre y cuando est?n en el ?rea de influencia de cada local, as? como la realizaci?n de determinadas actividades programadas con anticipaci?n tanto dentro como fuera de nuestras instalaciones. En este sentido, las actividades diarias fuera de las Casas se llevan a cabo en locales especializados- conducidos por los socios colaborativos, quienes cuentan con la preparaci?n necesaria para atender a nuestros clientes AM (gimnasio, piscina temperada, spa, cines, etc.). En este sentido, el fin es brindar experiencias positivas, en un ambiente seguro y acorde a las expectativas- tanto de los AM y de sus parientes a cargo

'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009)

A simple and effective 1D-element discrete-based method for computational bone remodeling

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering on 2022, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/10255842.2021.1943370.In-silico models applied to bone remodeling are widely used to investigate bone mechanics, bone diseases, bone-implant interactions, and also the effect of treatments of bone pathologies. This paper proposes a new methodology to solve the bone remodeling problem using one-dimensional (1D) elements to discretize trabecular structures more efficiently for 2D and 3D domains. An Euler integration scheme is coupled with the momentum equations to obtain the evolution of material density at each step. For the simulations, the equations were solved by using the finite element method, and two benchmark tests were solved varying mesh parameters. Proximal femur and calcaneus bone were selected as study cases given the vast research available on the topology of these bones, and compared with the anatomical features of trabecular bone reported in the literature. The presented methodology has proven to be efficient in optimizing topologies of lattice structures; It can predict the trend of formation patterns of the main trabecular groups from two different cancellous bones (femur and calcaneus) using domains set up by discrete elements as a starting point. Preliminary results confirm that the proposed approach is suitable and useful in bone remodeling problems leading to a considerable computational cost reduction. Characteristics similar to those encountered in topological optimization (TO) algorithms were identified in the benchmark tests as well, showing the viability of the proposed approach in other applications such as bio-inspired design.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft