Implementation of a herd management system with wireless sensor networks

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle monitoring applications. The proposed solution facilitates the requirement for continuously assessing the condition of individual animals, aggregating and reporting this data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to achieving animal monitoring, ranging from using a store and forward mechanism to employing GSM-based techniques; these approaches only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks by using alternative cheap, low power consumption sensor nodes capable of providing real-time communication at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, both the hardware and software has been designed to provide a solution which can obtain real-time data from dairy cattle whilst conforming to the limitations associated with WSNs implementations

Geographical and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 clades in the WHO European Region, January to June 2020

We show the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 genetic clades over time and between countries and outline potential genomic surveillance objectives. We applied three available genomic nomenclature systems for SARS-CoV-2 to all sequence data from the WHO European Region available during the COVID-19 pandemic until 10 July 2020. We highlight the importance of real-time sequencing and data dissemination in a pandemic situation. We provide a comparison of the nomenclatures and lay a foundation for future European genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2.Peer reviewe

RAID 6 hardware acceleration

Hard disk storage capacity has continued to rise whilst at the same time the cost per megabyte continues to fall. This, combined with increased usage of digital storage for documents, photography and video for both home and business use has led to increased need for reliable data storage system. Redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) have proven to offer the best characteristics for reliable storage. However, to date RAID based systems have been limited, due to cost and circuit complexity, by their support for only single disk erasure tolerance. FPGAs allow us to overcome these difficulties and allow support for more complex storage algorithms. This paper introduces an efficient FPGA based hardware RAID 6 accelerator providing uninterrupted access during all single and double disk erasures and recover

IP core for hardware RAID 6 acceleration

As storage requirements and magnetic disk densities increase the need for reliable storage solutions also increase. This IP core, written in Verilog HDL, provides a small and efficient hardware accelerator for performing RAID 6 calculations to provide uninterrupted access to data during both single and double disk failures. In this paper we describe the implementation and verification of a RAID 6 IP block. We present an example system implemented on an FPGA to demonstrate the capabilities of the IP block and verify its operation in hardwar

Evolution and applications of wireless sensor networks

Advances in low cost wireless and processing hardware have stimulated a range of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) research and their subsequent deployment in a number of applications. Since cost is an essential factor in any development, their designs are driven according to issues such as restricted memory size, limited computation power and low power consumption. However advanced applications such as those demanded by the medical/health care, military and surveillance sectors require higher levels of network performance supporting time sensitive, guaranteed and secure high quality data delivery. These demanding applications drive the need to enhance first generation WSN concepts

Wireless sensor networks for cattle monitoring

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle health monitoring. The proposed solution facilitates the requirement for continuously assessing the condition of individual animals, aggregating and reporting this data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to achieving animal monitoring, ranging from using a store and forward mechanism to employing GSM-based techniques; these approaches only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this solution overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks by using alternative cheap, low power consumption sensor nodes capable of providing real-time communication at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, both the hardware and software have been designed to provide real-time data from dairy cattle whilst conforming to the limitations associated with WSNs implementations

Wireless sensor networks in agriculture: cattle monitoring for farming industries

This paper investigates an adaptation of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to cattle monitoring application. The proposed solution facilitates a desired requirement of continuously assessing the condition of individual animal, aggregating and reporting these data to the farm manager. There are several existing approaches to animal monitoring, from using a store and forward mechanisms to employing a GSM technique. These approaches for monitoring livestock health can only provide sporadic information and introduce a considerable cost in staffing and physical hardware. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned draw-backs by using alternative low cost, low power consumption sensor nodes, which are capable of providing real-time communications at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, the hardware and software have been carefully designed to provide early indication of possible outbreaks while conforming to WSNs' stringent limitations

Adaptation of wireless sensor network for farming industries

In recent years, wireless sensor networks (WSN) have received considerable attention within agriculture and farming as a means to reduce operational costs and enhance animal health care. This paper examines the application of WSNs to livestock monitoring and the issues related to hardware realization. The core of this study is to overcome the aforementioned drawbacks by using alternative cheap, low power consumption sensor nodes capable of providing real-time communication at a reasonable hardware cost. In this paper, various factors i.e. radio frequency selection, channel bandwidth, etc. have been evaluated to provide a solution which can obtain real-time data from diary cattle whilst conforming to the limitations associated with WSNs implementations

Re-membering places and the performance of belonging(s).

Focusing on discourses and practices of identity in an Italian organization in London, this article examines the relationship between the construction of the identity of places and the construction of terrains of belonging. Various forms of cultural practices that mark out spatial and identity boundaries for the London Italian population are discussed in relation to the deployment of gender and ethnicity. Advancing a corporeal approach to identity formation, it is argued that displays of the Italian presence in London operate through the repetition of regulatory norms that produces the effect of materialization of cultural belonging through the ethnicizing and gendering of individual bodies. Gender and ethnicity are deeply embedded in one another and their entwinement is to be understood as the outcome of their construction along similar bodily lines. Also, the author shows that gender and ethnicity are mutually dependent on each other for their construction; imperatives of gender serve to stabilize a fluctuating and indeterminate ethnic culture, while ethnic conventions naturalize the different positions men and women occupy in social life