Autonomous Apple Harvester Robot

As agricultural demands rise and manual labor costs increase, there has become a dire need to automate apple harvesting. However, the precision and speed necessary for cost-efficient apple harvesting pose a significant challenge for robotic automation. To maintain cost-effective production, a harvester must be able to operate fast enough and long enough to compete with human labor. It must also be able to navigate and traverse apple orchards autonomously and pick apples without damaging the fruit or tree. This project presents an apple harvesting robot that uses a Mask R-CNN vision system with an RGB-D camera to detect the location of apples in a small-scale environment. These coordinates are then published to a ROS network from which a mobile robot with an LDS-02 laser scanner navigates through the environment and localizes itself through a combination of SLAM and AMCL algorithms. It then uses a four degree of freedom articulated arm and a custom soft gripping end effector to pluck the apple for the tree. This entire process is fully autonomous and is able to run for approximately 95 minutes before requiring a new battery. The camera used for vision is mounted in a stationary location outside of the environment. This project serves as an integration and application of several burgeoning fields of research in robotics including dead-reckoning mobile robotics, sensor fusion, soft-gripping actuators, control of articulated arms, and neural network vision processing. In sum, the robot is an effective demonstration of the application of robotics within the complex space of apple harvesting tasks

Impact of Nutrient Resorption on the Fitness and Growth in Iva Frutescens, Salt Marsh Elder

Nutrient resorption, a nutrient conservation mechanism used by deciduous plants, was investigated in Iva frutescens, a woody salt marsh perennial. To address the impact of nutrient resorption on the fitness and growth in the model organism, a field and laboratory study was undertaken. During the Fall of 2022, seed material and growth measurements were collected from ten replicate Iva frutescens plants at four salt marsh habitats along the coast of Narragansett Bay, RI. Collected seed material was dried to constant mass, manually sorted to purify seed sample, and weighed. In addition, a subsample of 100 seeds from five individuals from each sample site were counted and weighed to determine whether significant seed mass variation existed among individuals, or habitats. In this ongoing project, seed samples from the Fall of 2022 are continuing to be processed. Seed production and vegetative growth in Iva frutescens are currently being analyzed in preparation for the comparative work planned for Fall of 2023. These data, and future comparative analyses, will significantly add to the literature on nutrient resorption and its impacts on Iva frutescens fitness and growth, and that of plant nutrient conservation, at large

Radiographic Outcomes of Adult Spinal Deformity Correction : A Critical Analysis of Variability and Failures Across Deformity Patterns

Study Design: Multicenter, prospective, consecutive, surgical case series from the International Spine Study Group. Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of surgical treatment in restoring spinopelvic (SP) alignment. Summary of Background Data: Pain and disability in the setting of adult spinal deformity have been correlated with global coronal alignment (GCA), sagittal vertical axis (SVA), pelvic incidence/lumbar lordosis mismatch (PI-LL), and pelvic tilt (PT). One of the main goals of surgery for adult spinal deformity is to correct these parameters to restore harmonious SP alignment. Methods: Inclusion criteria were operative patients (age greater than 18 years) with baseline (BL) and 1-year full-length X-rays. Thoracic and thoracolumbar Cobb angle and previous mentioned parameters were calculated. Each parameter at BL and 1 year was categorized as either pathological or normal. Pathologic limits were: Cobb greater than 30 , GCA greater than 40 mm, SVA greater than 40 mm, PI-LL greater than 10 , and PT greater than 20 . According to thresholds, corrected or worsened alignment groups of patients were identified and overall radiographic effectiveness of procedure was evaluated by combining the results from the coronal and sagittal planes. Fondation Paristech, ISS

Comparison of the effects of myristrolated and transactivating peptide (TAT) conjugated mitochondrial fission peptide inhibitor (P110) in myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury

During myocardial I/R, cardiac mitochondrial fission-fusiondynamics are altered towards mitochondrial fission which during I/R is associated with a shortening of mitochondria, decreased ATP production, and increased reactive oxygen species, factors known to promote cardiomyocyte death. Therefore, inhibiting mitochondrial fission may be a strategy to salvage damaged cardiac myocytes during I/R and limit infarct size. Given that cell membrane permeability of peptides is crucial for efficacy, we compared theeffects of a novel mitochondrial fission peptide inhibitor, P110 (DLLPRGT) that was conjugated to either a TAT carrier peptide YGRKKRRQRRR-GG-DLLPRGT (MW=2427 g/mol) or myristic acid myr-DLLPRGT (MW=981 g/mol) to determine which of these peptide formulations would be more potent to attenuate cardiac contractile dysfunction and infarct size in isolated perfused rat hearts subjected to I (30 min)/R (90 min). We found that myr-P110 (1 M; n=6) given for 10 min before ischemia and for 20 min post-reperfusion, significantly restored the maximal rate of left ventricular developed pressure (dP/dtmax) to 49 ± 7% compared to TAT-conjugated P110 (1 M; n=6) and untreated controls (n=9), which only recovered to 26 ± 5% and 28 ± 4% of baseline values at 90 min post-reperfusion, respectively (p\u3c0.05). Myr-P110 also significantly reduced infarct size to 28± 2% compared to controls which had an infarct size of 46±3% (p\u3c0.01). Whereas, TAT-conjugated P110 had an infarct size of 35 ± 3% and was not statistically different from controls using ANOVA analysis. Preliminary results suggest myr-P110 would be a more effective formulation to salvage heart tissue after myocardial infarction

Profiling human breast epithelial cells using single cell RNA sequencing identifies cell diversity.

Breast cancer arises from breast epithelial cells that acquire genetic alterations leading to subsequent loss of tissue homeostasis. Several distinct epithelial subpopulations have been proposed, but complete understanding of the spectrum of heterogeneity and differentiation hierarchy in the human breast remains elusive. Here, we use single-cell mRNA sequencing (scRNAseq) to profile the transcriptomes of 25,790 primary human breast epithelial cells isolated from reduction mammoplasties of seven individuals. Unbiased clustering analysis reveals the existence of three distinct epithelial cell populations, one basal and two luminal cell types, which we identify as secretory L1- and hormone-responsive L2-type cells. Pseudotemporal reconstruction of differentiation trajectories produces one continuous lineage hierarchy that closely connects the basal lineage to the two differentiated luminal branches. Our comprehensive cell atlas provides insights into the cellular blueprint of the human breast epithelium and will form the foundation to understand how the system goes awry during breast cancer

TID Tolerance of Popular CubeSat Components

In this paper we report total dose test results of COTS components commonly used on CubeSats. We investigate a variety of analog integrated circuits, a popular microcontroller (PIC24) as well as SD memory card

Systematic review of symptom clusters in cardiovascular disease

Background: Although individual symptoms and symptom trajectories for various cardiovascular conditions have been reported, there is limited research identifying the symptom clusters that may provide a better understanding of patients’ experiences with heart disease. Aims: To summarize the state of the science in symptom cluster research for patients with acute coronary syndrome, myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass surgery, and heart failure through systematic review and to provide direction for the translation of symptom cluster research into the clinical setting. Methods: Databases were searched for articles from January 2000 through to May 2015 using MESH terms “symptoms, symptom clusters, acute coronary syndrome (ACS), myocardial infarction (MI), coronary heart disease (CHD), ischemic heart disease (IHD), heart failure (HF), coronary artery bypass surgery (CABS), cluster analyses, and latent classes.” The search was limited to human studies, English language articles, and original articles investigating symptom clusters in individuals with heart disease. Fifteen studies meeting the criteria were included. Results: For patients with ACS and MI, younger persons were more likely to experience clusters with the most symptoms. Older adults were more likely to experience clusters with the lowest number of symptoms and more diffuse and milder symptom clusters that are less reflective of classic ACS presentations. For HF patients, symptom clusters frequently included physical and emotional/cognitive components; edema clustered in only three studies. Symptom expression was congruent across geographical regions and cultures. Conclusions: The findings demonstrated similarities in symptom clusters during ACS, MI, and HF, despite multiple methods and analyses. These results may help clinicians to prepare at-risk patients for proper treatment-seeking and symptom self-management behaviors

Design and Functional Validation of a Mechanism for Dual-Spinning CubeSats

The mission of the Micro-sized Microwave Atmospheric Satellite (MicroMAS) is to collect useful atmospheric images using a miniature passive microwave radiometer payload hosted on a low-cost CubeSat platform. In order to collect this data, the microwave radiometer payload must rotate to scan the ground-track perpendicular to the satellite's direction of travel. A custom motor assembly was developed to facilitate the rotation of the payload while allowing the spacecraft bus to remained fixed in the local-vertical, local-horizontal (LVLH) frame for increased pointing accuracy. This paper describes the mechanism used to enable this dual-spinning operation for CubeSats, and the lessons learned during the design, fabrication, integration, and testing phases of the mechanism's development lifecycle