"Mobile host" wireless sensor networks : a new sensor network paradigm for structural health monitoring applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications can provide the data collection necessary for rapid structural assessment after an event such as a natural disaster puts the reliability of civil infrastructure in question. Unfortunately, there are many technical challenges associated with employing such a WSN in civil infrastructure for operation over multiple decades with maintenance costs low enough to justify the integration of such a WSN into a given structure. The technical challenges include ensuring power is maintained at the sensor nodes, reducing installation and maintenance costs, and automating the collection and analysis of data provided by a wireless sensor network. In this work a new WSN paradigm to address these challenges is presented. The new WSN paradigm is called the "mobile host" WSN. In a mobile host WSN, the sensor nodes are placed on the structure with no internal electrical power source. Instead the node is equipped with hardware to collect energy delivered to it wirelessly by a mobile host on an as-needed basis in order to perform its intended data acquisition and interrogation functions. When an event of interest occurs which might compromise the integrity of the structure, the sensor nodes capture relevant data from the event. In order to collect the data captured by the sensor network, a "mobile host" is sent to each sensor node and wirelessly charges it up. Once the sensor node is fully charged, it turns on and transmits its data wirelessly to the mobile host. The mobile host receives and stores the data and then implements appropriate structural health monitoring (SHM) data interrogation algorithms. If deemed necessary the mobile host then proceeds to interrogate other sensor nodes of interest on the structure. In this way a remote system is presented that can then be used to make a health assessment of the structure. This dissertation addresses the research challenges encountered when implementing a mobile host Won. A sensor node (THINNER) capable of collecting data tirelessly in the absence of electrical power was developed. A peak displacement and bolted joint p reload sensor capable of interfacing with the THINNER sensor node were designed and implemented. A wireless energy delivery package capable of being carried by an airborne mobile host was developed. Lastly, the system engineering required to implement the overall sensor network was carried out. The culmination of this work resulted in the first field demonstration of a mobile host wireless sensor network. The field demonstration took place on an out-of-service, full-scale bridge near Truth- or-Consequences, New Mexic

"Mobile host" wireless sensor networks : a new sensor network paradigm for structural health monitoring applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications can provide the data collection necessary for rapid structural assessment after an event such as a natural disaster puts the reliability of civil infrastructure in question. Unfortunately, there are many technical challenges associated with employing such a WSN in civil infrastructure for operation over multiple decades with maintenance costs low enough to justify the integration of such a WSN into a given structure. The technical challenges include ensuring power is maintained at the sensor nodes, reducing installation and maintenance costs, and automating the collection and analysis of data provided by a wireless sensor network. In this work a new WSN paradigm to address these challenges is presented. The new WSN paradigm is called the "mobile host" WSN. In a mobile host WSN, the sensor nodes are placed on the structure with no internal electrical power source. Instead the node is equipped with hardware to collect energy delivered to it wirelessly by a mobile host on an as-needed basis in order to perform its intended data acquisition and interrogation functions. When an event of interest occurs which might compromise the integrity of the structure, the sensor nodes capture relevant data from the event. In order to collect the data captured by the sensor network, a "mobile host" is sent to each sensor node and wirelessly charges it up. Once the sensor node is fully charged, it turns on and transmits its data wirelessly to the mobile host. The mobile host receives and stores the data and then implements appropriate structural health monitoring (SHM) data interrogation algorithms. If deemed necessary the mobile host then proceeds to interrogate other sensor nodes of interest on the structure. In this way a remote system is presented that can then be used to make a health assessment of the structure. This dissertation addresses the research challenges encountered when implementing a mobile host Won. A sensor node (THINNER) capable of collecting data tirelessly in the absence of electrical power was developed. A peak displacement and bolted joint p reload sensor capable of interfacing with the THINNER sensor node were designed and implemented. A wireless energy delivery package capable of being carried by an airborne mobile host was developed. Lastly, the system engineering required to implement the overall sensor network was carried out. The culmination of this work resulted in the first field demonstration of a mobile host wireless sensor network. The field demonstration took place on an out-of-service, full-scale bridge near Truth- or-Consequences, New Mexic

Gold(I)-Catalyzed Enantioselective Annulations between Allenes and Alkene-Tethered Oxime Ethers: A Straight Entry to Highly Substituted Piperidines and aza-Bridged Medium-Sized Carbocycles

Piperidine scaffolds are present in a wide range of bioactive natural products and are therefore considered as highly valuable, privileged synthetic targets. In this manuscript, we describe a gold-catalyzed annulation strategy that allows a straightforward assembly of piperidines and piperidine-containing aza-bridged products from readily available alkene-tethered oxime ethers (or esters) and N-allenamides. Importantly, we demonstrate the advantages of using oxime derivatives over imines, something pertinent to the whole area of gold catalysis, and provide relevant mechanistic experiments that shed light into the factors affecting the annulation processes. Moreover, we also describe preliminary experiments demonstrating the viability of enantioselective versions of the above reactions.This work received financial support from the Spanish MINECO (SAF2016-76689-R, CTQ2017-84767-P, FPU fellowship to I.V. and J.F.-C.), the Xunta de Galicia (ED431C 2017/19, 2015-CP082, Centro Singular de Investigación de Galicia accreditation 2016-2019 ED431G/09 and predoctoral fellowship to D.C.M.), the ERDF, ERC (Adv. Grant No. 340055), and the Orfeo-Cinqa network (CTQ2016- 81797-REDC). Dr. Rebeca Garciá -Fandiño is acknowledged for her contribution to the DFT studies.Peer Reviewe

Confidential Detection of Multiple Failures in Optical Networks: An Experimental Evaluation

This paper presents a Machine Learning technique based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) combined with telemetry data scrambling to detect multiple types of failure in optical networks while preserving data confidentiality. Experiments in an optical testbed show the effectiveness of the proposed solution

Confidentiality-preserving machine learning algorithms for soft-failure detection in optical communication networks

Automated fault management is at the forefront of next-generation optical communication networks. The increase in complexity of modern networks has triggered the need for programmable and software-driven architectures to support the operation of agile and self-managed systems. In these scenarios, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute zero-touch network and service management approach is imperative. The need for machine learning algorithms to process the large volume of telemetry data brings safety concerns as distributed cloud-computing solutions become the preferred approach for deploying reliable communication network automation. This paper's contribution is twofold. First, we propose a simple yet effective method to guarantee the confidentiality of the telemetry data based on feature scrambling. The method allows the operation of third-party computational services without direct access to the full content of the collected data. Additionally, the effectiveness of four unsupervised machine learning algorithms for soft-failure detection is evaluated when applied to the scrambled telemetry data. The methods are based on factor analysis, principal component analysis, nonlinear principal component analysis, and singular value decomposition. Most dimensionality reduction algorithms have the common property that they can maintain similar levels of fault classification performance while hiding the data structure from unauthorized access. Evaluations of the proposed algorithms demonstrate this capability

A novel β-hairpin peptide derived from the ARC repressor selectively interacts with the major groove of B-DNA

Transcription factors (TFs) have a remarkable role in the homeostasis of the organisms and there is a growing interest in how they recognize and interact with specific DNA sequences. TFs recognize DNA using a variety of structural motifs. Among those, the ribbon-helix-helix (RHH) proteins, exemplified by the MetJ and ARC repressors, form dimers that insert antiparallel β-sheets into the major groove of DNA. A great chemical challenge consists of using the principles of DNA recognition by TFs to design minimized peptides that maintain the DNA affinity and specificity characteristics of the natural counterparts. In this context, a peptide mimic of an antiparallel β-sheet is very attractive since it can be obtained by a single peptide chain folding in a β-hairpin structure and can be as short as 14 amino acids or less. Herein, we designed eight linear and two cyclic dodeca-peptides endowed with β-hairpins. Their DNA binding properties have been investigated using fluorescence spectroscopy together with the conformational analysis through circular dichroism and solution NMR. We found that one of our peptides, peptide 6, is able to bind DNA, albeit without sequence selectivity. Notably, it shows a topological selectivity for the major groove of the DNA which is the interaction site of ARC and many other DNA-binding proteins. Moreover, we found that a type I’ β-hairpin folding pattern is a favorite peptide structure for interaction with the B-DNA major groove. Peptide 6 is a valuable lead compound for the development of novel analogs with sequence selectivity