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

Industrial scale : estratègies metropolitanes per l'eficiència del transport industrial

El projecte "Industrial Scale" preten detectar i potenciar les condicions de contorn que ofereix un espai com el de l'estació de RENFE de Rubí. En primer lloc, detectem que és una estació molt infrautilitzada i d'ús pràcticament marginal, en un context totalment perifèric.D'altra banda, veiem potencial i oportunitat en la connectivitat a xarxes de mobilitat territorials, i la proximitat a grans superfícies de teixit industrial de caire productiu. A través d'un procés d'investigació hem observat que el transport amb tren és més eficient a nivell econòmic, energètic i ambiental. Amb aquestes condicions de contorn decidim intervenir sobre l'espai de l'estació de RENFE, proposant un canvi d'ús d'estació, de passatgers a port sec de mercaderies. Aquesta actuació permetrà al teixit industrial local una alternativa al transport rodat, a part de noves oportunitats i relacions econòmiques vinculades al corredor mediterrani de mercaderies, i per tant, un impacte socio-econòmic a la zona

Experimental and analytical study of cracks under biaxial fatigue

Most mechanical components experience multi-axial cyclic loading conditions during service. Experimental analysis of fatigue cracks under such conditions is not easy and most works tend to focus more on the simpler but less realistic case of uni-axial loading. Consequently, there are many uncertainties related to the load sequence effect that are now well known and are not normally incorporated into the growth models. The current work presents a new methodology for evaluating overload effect in biaxial fatigue cracks. The methodology includes evaluation of mixed-mode (KI and KII) stress intensity factor and the Crack Opening Displacement for samples with and without overload cycle under biaxial loading. The methodology is tested under a range of crack lengths. All crack-tip information is obtained with a hybrid methodology that combines experimental full-field digital image correlation data and Williams' elastic model describing the crack-tip field.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

“I want to know about everything that’s happening in the world:” Enhancing critical awareness through youth participatory action research with Latinx youth

Through a yearlong, qualitative ethnographic study that incorporated a youth participatory action research project, this research identifies and documents the learning outcomes achieved when core principles of critical pedagogy are brought into practice with urban Latinx youths to develop critical awareness. Analysis reveals three themes around how critical awareness was raised: attention to current events, an ethic of care, and challenging traditional curricula

Automated Early Detection of Drops in Commercial Egg Production Using Neural Networks

[Abstract] 1. The purpose of this work was to support decision-making in poultry farms by performing automatic early detection of anomalies in egg production. 2. Unprocessed data were collected from a commercial egg farm on a daily basis over 7 years. Records from a total of 24 flocks, each with approximately 20 000 laying hens, were studied. 3. Other similar works have required a prior feature extraction by a poultry expert, and this method is dependent on time and expert knowledge. 4. The present approach reduces the dependency on time and expert knowledge because of the automatic selection of relevant features and the use of artificial neural networks capable of cost-sensitive learning. 5. The optimum configuration of features and parameters in the proposed model was evaluated on unseen test data obtained by a repeated cross-validation technique. 6. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value are presented and discussed at 5 forecasting intervals. The accuracy of the proposed model was 0.9896 for the day before a problem occurs.Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; GRC2014/04

Early Warning in Egg Production Curves from Commercial Hens: a SVM Approach

[Abstract] Artificial Intelligence allows the improvement of our daily life, for instance, speech and handwritten text recognition, real time translation and weather forecasting are common used applications. In the livestock sector, machine learning algorithms have the potential for early detection and warning of problems, which represents a significant milestone in the poultry industry. Production problems generate economic loss that could be avoided by acting in a timely manner. In the current study, training and testing of support vector machines are addressed, for an early detection of problems in the production curve of commercial eggs, using farm’s egg production data of 478,919 laying hens grouped in 24 flocks. Experiments using support vector machines with a 5 k-fold cross-validation were performed at different previous time intervals, to alert with up to 5 days of forecasting interval, whether a flock will experience a problem in production curve. Performance metrics such as accuracy, specificity, sensitivity, and positive predictive value were evaluated, reaching 0-day values of 0.9874, 0.9876, 0.9783 and 0.6518 respectively on unseen data (test-set). The optimal forecasting interval was from zero to three days, performance metrics decreases as the forecasting interval is increased. It should be emphasized that this technique was able to issue an alert a day in advance, achieving an accuracy of 0.9854, a specificity of 0.9865, a sensitivity of 0.9333 and a positive predictive value of 0.6135. This novel application embedded in a computer system of poultry management is able to provide significant improvements in early detection and warning of problems related to the production curve

The archaeointensity of the earth's magnetic field retrieved from Pampean ceramics (South America)

Absolute intensity determinations using the Coe variant of the Thellier method have been carried out on some selected pottery fragments collected in the wetlands of the lower Paraná (Pampean region, Argentina) in order to construct the first archaeointensity master curve for South America. Associated radiometric ages range between 1640±70 and 730±70 bp. Twenty-one samples (five fragments) out of 46 studied (eight fragments) provided successful absolute intensity determinations. The fragment-mean archaeointensity values obtained in this study range from 21.9±2.3 to 42.6±5.4 μT, with corresponding virtual axial dipole moments (VADMs) ranging from 4.0±0.5 to 8.1±1.0 x 10 22Am 2. This corresponds to a mean VADM of (6.4±1.8)×10 22 Am 2. The synthetic record retrieved from southern Argentina and Brazil consists of 17 mean archaeointensities distributed between approximately ad 700 and ad 1700. The data set shows several distinct periods of fluctuations of quite large intensity. However, most data are concentrated into a relatively narrow time period from ad 950 to ad 1300. Three general features may be detected: the time intervals from about ad 950 to 1130 and 1350 to 1480 are characterized by quite monotonic increases of geomagnetic intensity, while some decrease is observed from ad 1150 to 1280. These variations may be speculatively correlated to climate changes over multi-decadal time scales. Important differences are observed between the data and the geomagnetic field predictions derived from recently reported global models, which reinforces the importance of regional reference curves for dating purposes.Fil: Goguitchaichvili, A.. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Loponte, Daniel Marcelo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación. Dirección Nacional de Cultura y Museos. Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano; ArgentinaFil: Morales, J.. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; MéxicoFil: Acosta, Alejandro Alberto. Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación. Dirección Nacional de Cultura y Museos. Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin