DEVELOPMENT OF A MODULAR AGRICULTURAL ROBOTIC SPRAYER

Precision Agriculture (PA) increases farm productivity, reduces pollution, and minimizes input costs. However, the wide adoption of existing PA technologies for complex field operations, such as spraying, is slow due to high acquisition costs, low adaptability, and slow operating speed. In this study, we designed, built, optimized, and tested a Modular Agrochemical Precision Sprayer (MAPS), a robotic sprayer with an intelligent machine vision system (MVS). Our work focused on identifying and spraying on the targeted plants with low cost, high speed, and high accuracy in a remote, dynamic, and rugged environment. We first researched and benchmarked combinations of one-stage convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures with embedded or mobile hardware systems. Our analysis revealed that TensorRT-optimized SSD-MobilenetV1 on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano provided sufficient plant detection performance with low cost and power consumption. We also developed an algorithm to determine the maximum operating velocity of a chosen CNN and hardware configuration through modeling and simulation. Based on these results, we developed a CNN-based MVS for real-time plant detection and velocity estimation. We implemented Robot Operating System (ROS) to integrate each module for easy expansion. We also developed a robust dynamic targeting algorithm to synchronize the spray operation with the robot motion, which will increase productivity significantly. The research proved to be successful. We built a MAPS with three independent vision and spray modules. In the lab test, the sprayer recognized and hit all targets with only 2% wrong sprays. In the field test with an unstructured crop layout, such as a broadcast-seeded soybean field, the MAPS also successfully sprayed all targets with only a 7% incorrect spray rate

Deep Submicron III-V on Si-Based Esaki Diode

Esaki tunneling diodes are reemerging as a viable technology option in helping to improve speed and performance of many high speed device applications. The revival of this technology may be linked to the development of new substrates available to research that allows for the fabrication of a device comparable to current silicon technology. Using a 111-V on Silicon Substrate, it was demonstrated that it is possible to create working Esaki Tunneling Diodes

Counterterrorism in the Philippines: Review of Key Issues

Terrorism has taken root in almost all corners of the world with terrorist organizations thriving in both rich and poor countries. In the Philippines, the Human Security Act of 2007 came into force to address the threat of terrorism to the national security of the country. However, the law has never been fully utilized. To provide law enforcers with a stronger legal measure to address acts of terrorism in the country, President Duterte certified a new Anti-Terrorism Bill as urgent, with Congress adopting the Senate version and approving it in the shortest time possible. Despite opposition from various sectors and growing concerns over some of its provisions, President Duterte signed this into law, officially becoming Republic Act No. 11479 or the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020. This article briefly reviews some key issues of counterterrorism measures in the Philippines

Beneficial effects of acute high-intensity exercise on electrophysiological indices of attention processes in young adult men

This is the final version. Available on open access from Elsevier via the DOI in this recordBackground: Emerging research suggests that a single bout of aerobic exercise can improve cognition, brain function and psychological health. Our aim was to examine the effects of high-intensity exercise on cognitive-performance and brain measures of attention, inhibition and performance-monitoring across a test-battery of three cognitive tasks. Method: Using a randomised cross-over design, 29 young men completed three successive cognitive tasks (Cued Continuous Performance Task [CPT-OX]; Eriksen Flanker Task; four-choice reaction-time task [Fast Task]) with simultaneous electroencephalogram (EEG) recording before and after a 20-min high-intensity cycling exercise and resting control session. Cognitive-performance measures, EEG power and event-related potential measures, were obtained during the tasks. Random-intercept linear models were used to investigate the effects of exercise, compared to rest, on outcomes. Results: A single bout of exercise significantly (p < 0.05) increased the amplitude of the event-related potential Go P3, but had no effect on the contingent negative variation (CNV), Cue P3 or NoGo P3, during the CPT-OX. Delta power, recorded during the CPT-OX, also significantly increased after exercise, whereas there was no effect on cognitive-performance in this task. Exercise did not influence any cognitive-performance or brain measures in the subsequent Flanker or Fast Tasks. Conclusion: Acute high-intensity exercise improves brain-indices reflecting executive and sustained attention during task performance (Go P3 and delta activity), in the CPT-OX, but not anticipatory attention (Cue P3 and CNV) or response inhibition (NoGo P3) in young-adult men. Exercise had no effect on cognitive-performance or brain measures in the subsequent Flanker and Fast tasks, which may potentially be explained by the time delay after exercise.Medical Research Council (MRC)National Institute for Health Research (NIHR

Association of preterm birth with ADHD-like cognitive impairments and additional subtle impairments in attention and arousal malleability

BACKGROUND: Whilst preterm-born individuals have an increased risk of developing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and are reported to have ADHD-like attention and arousal impairments, direct group comparisons are scarce. METHODS: We directly compared preterm-born adolescents (n = 186) to term-born adolescents with ADHD (n = 69), and term-born controls (n = 135), aged 11-23, on cognitive-performance, event-related potential and skin conductance level (SCL) measures associated with attention and arousal. The measures are from baseline and fast-incentive conditions of a four-choice reaction time task, previously shown to discriminate between the individuals with ADHD and controls. We aimed to establish whether preterm-born adolescents show: (a) identical cognitive-neurophysiological impairments to term-born adolescents with ADHD (b) possible additional impairments, and whether (c) the observed impairments correlate with ADHD symptom scores. RESULTS: The preterm group, like the term-born ADHD group, showed increased mean reaction time (MRT) and reaction time variability (RTV) in the baseline condition, and attenuated contingent negative variation (CNV) amplitude (response preparation) in the fast-incentive condition. The preterm group, only, did not show significant within-group adjustments in P3 amplitude (attention allocation) and SCL (peripheral arousal). Dimensional analyses showed that ADHD symptoms scores correlated significantly with MRT, RTV and CNV amplitude only. CONCLUSIONS: We find impairments in cognition and brain function in preterm-born adolescents that are linked to increased ADHD symptoms, as well as further impairments, in lack of malleability in neurophysiological processes. Our findings indicate that such impairments extend at least to adolescence. Future studies should extend these investigations into adulthood