Response to anthracnose in a tarwi (Lupinus muyabilis) collection is influenced by anthocyanin pigmentation

Anthracnose, caused by Colletotrichum lupini, is a major limiting factor for lupin production. Tarwi or Andean Lupin (Lupinus mutabilis) is generally regarded as susceptible to anthracnose, but the high protein and oil content of its seeds raise interest in promoting its cultivation in Europe. In this study we evaluated the response to anthracnose of 10 tarwi accessions contrasting in anthocyanin pigmentation, by comparison to white lupin (Lupinus albus), using a contemporary Portuguese fungal isolate. A severity rating scale was optimized, including weighted parameters considering the type of symptoms and organs a ected. All tarwi accessions were classified as susceptible, exhibiting sporulating necroses on the main stem from seven days after inoculation. Anthracnose severity was lower on anthocyanin-rich tarwi plants, with accession LM34 standing out as the less susceptible. Accession I82 better combines anthracnose response and yield. In global terms, disease severity was lower on white lupin than on tarwi. Although based on a limited collection, the results of the study show the existence of genetic variability among L. mutabilis towards anthracnose response relatable with anthocyanin pigmentation, providing insights for more detailed and thorough characterization of tarwi resistance to anthracnoseinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biophysical chances in aqua-sky exercise with different musical cadences : instructors evaluation

Apenas está disponível um resumo

Field results on developed three-phase four-wire shunt active power filters

Abstract-This paper presents three-phase four-wire Shunt Active Power Filters with ability to compensate current harmonics, power factor, and current unbalance. The power stage of the Active Power Filters is based on a two-level four-leg inverter. The switching technique is based on an optimized periodic sampling strategy, and the digital controller uses the Theory of Instantaneous Reactive Power (p-q Theory) expanded for three- phase four-wire systems. The presented Active Power Filters were successfully demonstrated in four different facilities. The presented experimental results show the performance of the Active Power Filters in operation with very different load profiles

Effect of biofertilizers and neem oil on the entomopathogenic fungi beauveria bassiana (Bals.) vuill. and metarhizium anisopliae (Metsch.) sorok.

The in vitro fungitoxic effect of three biofertilizers, E.M.-4, Multibion Ô and Supermagro used in organic agriculture and the neem oil (Azadirachta indica A. Juss) on the entomopathogenic fungi Metarhizium anisopliae and Beauveria bassiana was studied. These products were mixed in a medium where the two fungi were inoculated, and germination, vegetative growth and conidiogenesis were assessed. The biofertilizers Supermagro and E.M.- 4 showed to be less toxic for the two fungi whereas MultibionÔ caused major inhibition on M. anisopliae, with reductions in germination (-37.74%), colony diameter (-30.26%) and conidiogenesis (-42.62%). Neem oil promoted a larger negative effect on B. bassiana, inhibiting germination (-45.27%), colony diameter (-36.62%) and conidiogenesis (-84.93%)

A deep learning-based dirt detection computer vision system for floor-cleaning robots with improved data collection

Floor-cleaning robots are becoming increasingly more sophisticated over time and with the addition of digital cameras supported by a robust vision system they become more autonomous, both in terms of their navigation skills but also in their capabilities of analyzing the surrounding environment. This document proposes a vision system based on the YOLOv5 framework for detecting dirty spots on the floor. The purpose of such a vision system is to save energy and resources, since the cleaning system of the robot will be activated only when a dirty spot is detected and the quantity of resources will vary according to the dirty area. In this context, false positives are highly undesirable. On the other hand, false negatives will lead to a poor cleaning performance of the robot. For this reason, a synthetic data generator found in the literature was improved and adapted for this work to tackle the lack of real data in this area. This synthetic data generator allows for large datasets with numerous samples of floors and dirty spots. A novel approach in selecting floor images for the training dataset is proposed. In this approach, the floor is segmented from other objects in the image such that dirty spots are only generated on the floor and do not overlap those objects. This helps the models to distinguish between dirty spots and objects in the image, which reduces the number of false positives. Furthermore, a relevant dataset of the Automation and Control Institute (ACIN) was found to be partially labelled. Consequently, this dataset was annotated from scratch, tripling the number of labelled images and correcting some poor annotations from the original labels. Finally, this document shows the process of generating synthetic data which is used for training YOLOv5 models. These models were tested on a real dataset (ACIN) and the best model attained a mean average precision (mAP) of 0.874 for detecting solid dirt. These results further prove that our proposal is able to use synthetic data for the training step and effectively detect dirt on real data. According to our knowledge, there are no previous works reporting the use of YOLOv5 models in this application.publishe

3D finite element analysis and optimization of cap ply production system in the tire industry

30th International Conference on Flexible Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing (FAIM2020) 15-18 June 2020, Athens, GreeceIn automotive industry, tires play a key role. They are a composite structure formed by multiple layers of different materials such as rubber compounds, steel and polyamide cords. Between the tread and steel belts, a cap ply layer is used to restrict the growth of the tire, due to centrifugal forces. Cap ply is produced by using a pultrusion process that impregnates polyamide cords with rubber, resulting in a rubberized strip. When the controlling of the process is incorrect, premature vulcanization or lack of impregnation is often observed. To optimize the production process, CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations were performed to study the flow of rubber inside the extrusion head channels by modelling the fluid properties and the domain. Laboratory tests were also conducted to determine the physical and cure properties of the rubber compound used. Crossing the results of the simulations with the laboratory tests was found that the temperature control used was inadequate. Simulations were also supported with the results provided by a temperature sensor controlled by an external device (Arduino). By using a proportional integral derivative controller and changing the setpoints for the thermal resistance, the amount of scrap generated by vulcanized rubber and lack of rubber in the cap ply strips was reduced by 100%.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards a Practical and Cost-Effective Water Monitoring System

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the preservation, protection and sustainable use of natural resources. Water resources, being one of the most important, face major threats due to contamination by pollutants of various types and origins. Maintaining the quality of water resources requires more robust, reliable and more frequent monitoring than traditional data collection techniques based on manual sampling methods. This article, which is the result of ongoing research, proposes a practical and cost-effective solution for a surface water monitoring system, using a robotics platform and cloud services. The proposed solution allows for scalability and will accommodate a wide range of end-user specifications. To allow for continuous operation in longer activities, the design of a versatile real-time water quality monitoring system should also take into consideration the question of its energy requirements and self-sufficiency.This work was supported by Centro 2020, Portugal 2020 and European Union (EU) under the grants, CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-024052E – Libélula: Mobile robotic surface water quality monitoring system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evolutionary Insights into IL17A in Lagomorphs

In leporids, IL17A had been implicated in the host defense against extracellular pathogens, such as Francisella tularensis that infects hares and rabbits and causes the zoonotic disease tularemia. Here, we studied IL17A from five lagomorphs, European rabbit, pygmy rabbit, brush rabbit, European brown hare, and American pika. We observed that this protein is highly conserved between these species, with a similarity of 97-99% in leporids and ~88% between leporids and American pika. The exon/intron structure, N-glycosylation sites, and cysteine residues are conserved between lagomorphs. However, at codon 88, one of the interaction sites between IL17A and its receptor IL17RA, there is an Arg>Pro mutation that only occurs in European rabbit and European brown hare. This could induce critical alterations in the IL17A structure and conformation and consequently modify its function. The differences observed between leporids and humans or rodents might also represent important alterations in protein structure and function. In addition, as for other interleukins, IL17A sequences of human and European rabbit are more closely related than the sequences of human and mouse or European rabbit and mouse. This study gives further support to the hypothesis that European rabbit might be a more suitable animal model for studies on human IL17.FCT and North Portugal Regional Operational Programme 2007/2013 (ON.2) grants supported this work

Comparison of three control theories for single-phase active power filters

Active Power Filters have been developed in last years, mostly for three-phase systems applications. The use of Shunt Active Power Filters on single-phase facilities brings many benefits for the electrical grid, since these installations have non linear loads and power factor problems, and in their total, they are responsible by a significant portion of the total electric energy consumption. Harmonics and reactive power consumed by single-phase installations cause additional power losses on the electrical grid. So, mitigate harmonics at the origin helps reducing these extra losses and other problems caused by the harmonics. The drawback of this solution is the necessity of a large number of Active Power Filters distributed by the generality of the single-phase facilities. So, it becomes necessary a simple and low cost Shunt Active Power Filter to install on single-phase installations. This paper presents three simple control theories to use on single-phase Shunt Active Power Filters. Simulation and experimental results comparing the three different control theories are presented and analyzed.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT