A CSI-based Human Activity Recognition using Canny Edge Detector

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is one of the hot topics in the field of human-computer interaction. It has a wide variety of applications in different tasks such as health rehabilitation, smart houses, smart grids, robotics, and human action prediction. HAR can be carried out through different approaches such as vision-based, sensor-based, radar-based, and Wi-Fi-based. Due to the ubiquitous and easyto-deploy characteristic of Wi-Fi devices, Wi-Fi-based HAR has gained the interest of both academia and industry in recent years.WiFi-based HAR can be implemented by two channel metrics: Channel State Information (CSI) and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI). Recently, converting the CSI data to images has led to increasing the accuracy level of activity prediction. However, none of the previous research has focused on extracting the features of converted images using image-processing techniques. In this study, we investigate three available datasets, gathered using CSI property, and took advantage of Deep Learning (DL), with convolutional layers and edge detection technique to increase overall system accuracy. The canny edge detector extracts the most important features of the image, and giving it to the DL model empowers the prediction of activities. In all three datasets, we witnessed an improvement of 5%, 27%, and 37% in terms of accuracy

A Novel Smartphone Application for Indoor Positioning of Users based on Machine Learning

Smartphones are linked with individuals and are valuable and yet easily available sources for characterising users’ behaviour and activities. User’s location is among the characteristics of each individual that can be utilised in the provision of location-based services (LBs) in numerous scenarios such as remote health-care and interactive museums. Mobile phone tracking and positioning techniques approximate the position of a mobile phone and thereby its user, by disclosing the actual coordinate of a mobile phone. Considering the advances in positioning techniques, indoor positioning is still a challenging issue, because the coverage of satellite signals is limited in indoor environments. One of the promising solutions for indoor positioning is fingerprinting in which the signals of some known transmitters are measured in several reference points (RPs). This measured data, which is called dataset is stored and used to train a mathematical model that relates the received signal from the transmitters (model input) and the location of that user (the output of the model). Considering all the improvements in indoor positioning, there is still a gap between practical solutions and the optimal solution that provides near theoretical accuracy for positioning. This accuracy directly impacts the level of usability and reliability in corresponding LBSs. In this paper, we develop a smartphone app with the ability to be trained and detect users’ location, accurately. We use Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) as a probabilistic method to find the parameters of a non-linear and non-convex indoor positioning model. We collect a dataset of received signals’ strength (RSS) in several RPs by using a software which is prepared and installed on an Android smartphone.We also find the accurate 2σ confidence interval in the presented GPR method and evaluate the performance of the proposed method by measured data in a realistic scenario. The measurements confirm that our proposed method outperforms some conventional methods including KNN, SVR and PCA-SVR in terms of accuracy

Effects of Opium Addiction and Cigarette Smoking on Hematological Parameters

Background: The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of opium addiction and cigarette smoking on the complete blood count (CBC).Methods: Eighty-six male subjects, including 31 opium-addicted cigarette smokers (OACS), 19 opium-addicted non-cigarette smokers (OANCS), 17 non-opium-addicted cigarette smokers (NOACS), and 19 non-opium-addicted non-cigarette smokers (NOANCS) participated in this study. The CBC test was measured in all individuals.Findings: The OACS had significantly higher white blood cell (WBC), lymphocyte, and red blood cell (RBC) count but lower in mean corpuscular volume (MCV) compared to NOANCS. The OANCS had significantly higher lymphocyte in comparison with NOACS. Our results demonstrated that the number of WBC, lymphocytes, and RBC were significantly higher, while, MCV was lower in OANCS subjects when compared to NOACS. The OACS had significantly higher level of lymphocyte in comparison with NOACS. The mean number of lymphocyte in OANCS was found significantly higher than NOACS. The smokers were shown to have significantly higher levels of WBC compared to NOANCS.Conclusion: Our results showed that opium-addiction, especially when associated with cigarette smoking, has intensive effects on hematological factors and these alteration might leads to greater risk for developing atherosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases, and imbalance in immune system

Evaluation of Drought Stress Thresholds in Ornamental Barberry (Berberis thunbergii cv. Atropurpurea) Shrub in Mashhad Condition

Introduction: The population growth and water requirement for domestic consumption, industry, agriculture and urban development in Mashhad megacity, increase pressures on freshwater resources. Therefore, planning for water use optimization is necessary. The new allocation of water resources for landscape greenish, especially in arid and semi-arid is difficult. Therefore, water allocation to landscape is valuable and should be used efficiently. According to water resource limitation, using drought-tolerant plant species and determine threshold of drought tolerance in landscape can improve water use management. Plants that naturally survive in your area are the ones best adapted to your soil, climate and rainfall. By selecting plants that either avoid or tolerate dry conditions, a beautiful, thriving landscape can be made possible. Drought-tolerant plants survive long periods of drought by storing water internally or by developing extensive root systems that sink deep into the soil. Many drought-tolerant plants have additional protection through a waxy coating that reduces evaporation or hairs on the leaf surface that reflect some of the light, insulating the plant. Most drought-tolerant plants use several of these features to survive on low amounts of precipitation. Japanese barberry is a compact woody deciduous shrub with arching branches. Leaf colours include green, bluish-green to dark red and purple. B. thunbergii's progress in the United States has, to date, been held in check to the south by, probably, its need for cold winter temperatures for stratification of the seeds, and to the west by, probably, drought conditions. Although very drought tolerant once established, a very dry terrain would tend to discourage its incursion. Rugged, adaptable, no serious problems or pests, easy to maintain, transplants readily, shade and drought tolerant, deer resistant is typical ad copy found at any site offering this shrub of colourful fall foliage. In this regard, drought stress tolerance thresholds of ornamental barberry plant in Mashhad landscape were evaluated. Materials and Methods: In order to determine the qualitative and quantitative drought stress tolerance thresholds of ornamental barberry (Berberis thunbergii) plant an experiment was conducted basis on randomized complete block design with three replications in Plant Production Complex of Mashhad Municipality. Treatments included; 100, 80, 60, 40, and 20% of culculated water requirements based on evaporation pan data. Two years old plants with similar size were transplanted from pots to field in 16 March 2012. Treatments were applied after establishment in 28 April and sampling was arranged in 6 August, 23 August, 6 September, and 7 October. During the growing season, the evaporation level was daily measured from pan Class A. In each sampling two plants sampled randomly from each plot for measuring the plant height, highest branches, number of branches, fresh and dry weight, dry mater percentage, irrigation water use index and freshness index. Results and Discussion: Results showed that with increasing severity of drought stress plant height of barberry reduced significantly, but there were no significant difference between 100 and 80% of water requirement treatments. The highest branches reduced by diminishing water application volume but there were no significant difference among 100, 80 and 60% of water requirement application. The maximum of branch number was observed at 60 percent water requirement, however, there were no significant difference between 100 and 60% of water requirement treatments. The number of branches in 60% was 26% lower than 80% of water requirement. Therefore, application of 60% water requirement with 23 branches per plant produced highest branch number. The highest and lowest plant fresh weight was measured in 100% and 20% water requirement application, respectively. Application of 60% of water requirement produced statistically on the same biomass production of 100% of water requirement application. The lowest freshness index was observed in 20 and 40% of water requirement, but there were no significant difference among 60, 80 and 100% of water requirement applications. Conclusion: Generally, results showed that ornamental barberry plant is a drought resistant plant and it can be alive by only 20% of its water requirement application, but for having freshness ornamental barberry in urban landscape, at least 60% of its water requirement should be applied. Based on the present results, water application of ornamental barberry could be reduced to 60% of calculated water requirement. It could be saved water application of barberry up to 4400 m-3.ha-1 in a growing season in Mashhad condition

Effect of Different Light Sources on Morphology and Growth of Potato Plantlets under in-vitro Conditions and their Effect on Minituber Production in Greenhouse

Introduction: Conventional seed programmes take more than 10 years and diseases during each round of field multiplication become increasingly common and especially those transmitted through seed tubers. In contrast, the production of large volume of propagation material in protected environments requires only a few additional years of traditional seed multiplication in the field to produce the desired seed with an improved health status. This is useful especially in countries where there are no vector-free production areas for producing high quality potato seed tubers. In the last few decades, alternative seed production programmers have been developed in which the first multiplication steps are speeded up using in vitro plantlets, microtubers or minitubers. In the area of controlled environment agriculture (CEA), one of the most commonly discussed topics is lighting. The lighting system is generally the most expensive component of a controlled environment agriculture facility in terms of upfront costs as well as ongoing expenses (electricity use as well as replacement lamps). Naturally, advances in lighting technology are of great interest to the controlled environment agriculture community for these very reasons. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are the most recent lighting technology to enter the controlled environment agriculture arena and have great potential to improve performance and reduce the overall cost of controlled environment lighting. Growth and morphogenetic effects of light (quality, intensity, and duration) and phytohormones are well documented, but their modes of action and mutual interactions are far from clear. One of the important questions is whether at least some of the morphogenetic effects of light are mediated by changes in phytohormone levels. This experiment was conducted in order to study the effect of different light sources on morphology and growth of potato plantlets under in-vitro conditions and their effect on minituber production in greenhouse to decrease energy consumption and production costs. Materials and Methods: A factorial experiment was conducted based on completely randomized design with six replications under in-vitro conditions and four replications in greenhouse. Factors were consisted of cultivars (cv. Agria and Savalan) and light sources (LEDs emitting red, blue, white, combination of red and blue and also tubular fluorescent lamps as control). The experiment was carried out at the tissue culture laboratory of Yeka Seed Technology of Iran. Disease-free potato in vitro plantlets of Agria and Savalan cultivars were derived from the potato germplasm bank of Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran. The plantlets were propagated using single-node cutting. Eight explants were cultured in sterilized culture vessels containing 30 ml of MS and pH was set to 5.8 before adding agar and autoclaving. Culture vessel were closed with polycarbonate caps and sealed with household plastic foil and were placed in a growth chamber at 24 °C and 16 h photoperiod for 4 weeks. Results and Discussion: Results indicated that red spectrum caused an increase in plantlet height and Agria had a higher plantlet height under in-vitro conditions. Root length was higher in red-blue combination and no difference was observed between cultivars under in-vitro condition. The highest and lowest leaf area was obtained in white and red spectrum, respectively. Also, Savalan showed a higher leaf area in comparison with Agria. The lowest node number in plantlets was observed in red spectrum and the highest in white. The highest and lowest internode length was related to red and blue spectrum, respectively. Fluorescent light was resulted in the lowest plantlet fresh weight and no significant difference was observed among other treatments according to this parameter. Stem diameter and number of branches was not affected by different lights. Results of greenhouse study indicated that light conditions before transplanting of plantlets did not affected minituber number, while minituber weight was significantly affected by this factor and the lowest mean of this parameter was obtained in red spectrum compared to the other treatments. Conclusion: Generally, results showed that less leaf area plantlet in vitro was also less leaf area in greenhouse (red light emitting diode). Leaf area is an important criteria for photosynthetic and biomass production. Therefore, in this experiment fresh and dry matter production was affected by this characteristics and red light showed the lowest dry matter production. LEDs could be considered as suitable light sources producing plantlets comparable with those grown under fluorescent light under in-vitro conditions along with saving energy and ultimately lower production cost

CSI-Based Human Activity Recognition Using Multi-Input Multi-Output Autoencoder and Fine-Tuning

Wi-Fi-based human activity recognition (HAR) has gained considerable attention recently due to its ease of use and the availability of its infrastructures and sensors. Channel state information (CSI) captures how Wi-Fi signals are transmitted through the environment. Using channel state information of the received signals transmitted from Wi-Fi access points, human activity can be recognized with more accuracy compared with the received signal strength indicator (RSSI). However, in many scenarios and applications, there is a serious limit in the volume of training data because of cost, time, or resource constraints. In this study, multiple deep learning models have been trained for HAR to achieve an acceptable accuracy level while using less training data compared to other machine learning techniques. To do so, a pretrained encoder which is trained using only a limited number of data samples, is utilized for feature extraction. Then, by using fine-tuning, this encoder is utilized in the classifier, which is trained by a fraction of the rest of the data, and the training is continued alongside the rest of the classifier’s layers. Simulation results show that by using only 50% of the training data, there is a 20% improvement compared with the case where the encoder is not used. We also showed that by using an untrainable encoder, an accuracy improvement of 11% using 50% of the training data is achievable with a lower complexity level

Optimizing the growth of Spirulina platensis in the enriched water of the Persian Gulf

Background: The use of Spirulina platensis has been expanded in various fields. The main goal of this research is to optimize the growth conditions of this microalgae to reduce costs and increase the benefits of its mass production in seawater. It is also feasible to lessen environmental pollution by producing more spirulina by discovering the best growing conditions for it through the enrichment of Persian Gulf water. Methods: First, the growth conditions of Spirulina platensis were optimized based on three factors: temperature, light, and pH. The temperature factor included four treatments, the light factor included four treatments, and the PH factor included five treatments. Also, Spirulina platensis microalgae were cultured in optimal growth conditions in Persian Gulf water, seawater enriched with 5% Zarrouk, 10% Zarrouk, with urea, and pure Zarrouk culture medium. Findings: The best temperature range for the growth of Spirulina platensis was 27–32 degrees Celsius. Also, the best growth was achieved in 16 hours of light and 8 hours of darkness; for the PH factor, the most appropriate value was determined between 10.72 and 11.47. Also, in the cultivation of Spirulina platensis, optimal conditions for the growth of Spirulina microalgae were obtained in the medium of Zarrouk, urea, 10% Zarrouk, 5% Zarrouk, and seawater, respectively. Conclusion: Therefore, the growth of Spirulina platensis in Persian Gulf water is slow and shows little performance, and by enriching this water with the mentioned factors, the microalgae enter the logarithmic phase faster and show better performance

Stress memory in seedlings of primed seed chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) using sodium nitroprusside under cold stress

Pea cultivation has been developed as a rich source of protein in many countries. The spring cultivation of chickpeas has low performance and efficiency due to the short length of the growth period and the confrontation of the reproductive period with drought and high temperature stress. Autumn cultivation of chickpeas is introduced as an important solution in reducing the yield caused by high temperature and drought stress during the flowering time of spring cultivation. However, in autumn cultivation, sensitivity to cold is the main limitation. So, the present study was performed to investigate the effect of nitric oxide on stress memory due to seed priming with sodium nitroprusside for cold tolerance of chickpea seedlings under simulated autumn temperatures. This experiment was conducted as a factorial in a completely randomized design with nine replicates at the Research Center for Plant Sciences of Ferdowsi University, Mashhad Iran, in 2020. Experimental factors included seed priming at two levels (control and sodium nitroprusside) and chickpea cultivars, including a susceptible genotype (MCC505) and a cold-tolerant cultivar (Saral). This experiment evaluated the gene expression of antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, and ascorbate peroxidase) in the seedling stage. The results revealed that superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, and ascorbate peroxidase genes were expressed in sodium nitroprusside and control treatments. In the Saral cultivar, sodium nitroprusside increased the gene expression of superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, and ascorbate peroxidase enzymes by 29, 88, 54, and 63%, respectively. On the other hand, the gene expression of these enzymes in the control treatment may be due to the effect of temperature on them. There was a significant increase in the expression of superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, and ascorbate peroxidase genes in the Saral cultivar compared to the MCC505 genotype. In general, sodium nitroprusside increased the activity of antioxidant enzymes in the Saral cultivar through the expression of antioxidant enzyme genes