Soft Robotic Link with Controllable Transparency for Vision-based Tactile and Proximity Sensing

Robots have been brought to work close to humans in many scenarios. For coexistence and collaboration, robots should be safe and pleasant for humans to interact with. To this end, the robots could be both physically soft with multimodal sensing/perception, so that the robots could have better awareness of the surrounding environment, as well as to respond properly to humans' action/intention. This paper introduces a novel soft robotic link, named ProTac, that possesses multiple sensing modes: tactile and proximity sensing, based on computer vision and a functional material. These modalities come from a layered structure of a soft transparent silicon skin, a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film, and reflective markers. Here, the PDLC film can switch actively between the opaque and the transparent state, from which the tactile sensing and proximity sensing can be obtained by using cameras solely built inside the ProTac link. In this paper, inference algorithms for tactile proximity perception are introduced. Evaluation results of two sensing modalities demonstrated that, with a simple activation strategy, ProTac link could effectively perceive useful information from both approaching and in-contact obstacles. The proposed sensing device is expected to bring in ultimate solutions for design of robots with softness, whole-body and multimodal sensing, and safety control strategies.Comment: Submitted to RoboSoft 2023 for review. Final content subjected to chang

USING A MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION-MAKING MODEL TO EVALUATE AND SELECT AN E-COMMERCE PLATFORM

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to disruptions in consumers' lifestyles and purchases, as well as businesses' online business models. Online platforms are increasingly used for shopping purposes. To evaluate and choose an e-commerce platform requires using many criteria and decision makers. Therefore, the process of evaluating and selecting an e-commerce platform is viewed as a multi-criteria decision-making problem. The objective of this study is to develop a multi-criteria decision-making model to help consumers evaluating the e-commerce platforms. In the proposed model, the ratings of alternatives and the weights of the criteria are evaluated using the linguistic variable. Simulation examples are used to show the effectiveness of the model in practice.  Keywords: Fuzzy TOPSIS, E-Commerce Platform, Mcdm, Fuzzy Sets

RECOVERY OF POLY(3-HYDROXYBUTYRATE) FROM Yangia sp. ND199 BY SIMPLE DIGESTION WITH SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE

Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) is a biodegradable polymer synthesized intracellularly by many microorganisms. After extraction from the cells, they possess the common features of non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradable and recyclable. These features render them highly competitive with polypropylene or other petroleum-derived plastics, especially in medicine. The isolation and purification of PHA from bacterial cells are the key step of PHA production process. There are several methods have been used for OHA purification, these include solvent extraction, enzymatic hydrolysis, and chemical digestion. In this study we used chemical digestion method for purification of PHB from Yangia sp. ND199. Among various chemical tested (NaOH, HCl, KOH, NaOCl, and SDS), NaOCl was found as an efficient chemical for PHB recovery and PHB purity from Yangia sp. ND199. The optimal purity and recovery conditions were a ratio of 1:1 (v/v, solution containing 100 g/l bacterial cells and solution containing 6% NaOCl), a 30 oC temperature and a 1 h treatment time. Under such conditions, a purity of 99% and a recovery of 94% were obtained. This method is sumple and can be developed and used for industrial scale

Synergic Effect of CaI and LiI on Ionic Conductivity of Solution-Based Synthesized Li7P3S11 Solid Electrolyte

Li7P3S11 doped with CaX2 (X = Cl, Br, I) and LiI solid electrolytes were successfully prepared by liquid-phase synthesis using acetonitrile as the reaction medium. Their structure was investigated using XRD, Raman spectroscopy and SEM-EDS. The data obtained from complex impedance spectroscopy was analyzed to study the ionic conductivity and relaxation dynamics in the prepared samples. The XRD results suggested that a part of CaX2 and LiI incorporated into the structure of Li7P3S11, while the remaining part existed at the grain boundary of the Li7P3S11 particle. The Raman peak positions of PS43- and P2S74- ions in samples 90Li7P3S11-5CaI2 and 90Li7P3S11-5CaI2-5LiI had shifted as compared to the Li7P3S11 sample, showing that CaI2 addition affected the vibration of PS43- and P2S74- ions. EDS results indicated that CaI2 and LiI were well dispersed in the prepared powder sample. The ionic conductivity at 25 °C of sample 90Li7P3S11-5CaI2-5LiI reached a very high value of 3.1 mS cm-1 due to the improvement of Li-ion movement at the grain boundary and structural improvement upon CaI2 and LiI doping. This study encouraged the application of Li7P3S11 in all-solid-state Li-ion batteries

Research on Hydrochemical Characters and Water Qtlality in the Coastal Region from Quangninh to Haiphong

Abstracts of 3rd UNU-ORI joint international workshop for marine environment海洋環境国際ワークショップ講演要

CSA: Thực hành nông nghiệp thông minh với khí hậu ở Việt Nam

During the last five years, Vietnam has been one of the countries most affected by climate change. Severe typhoons, flooding, cold spells, salinity intrusion, and drought have affected agriculture production across the country, from upland to lowland regions. Fortunately for Vietnam, continuous work in developing climate-smart agriculture has been occurring in research organizations and among innovative farmers and entrepreneurs. Application of various CSA practices and technologies to adapt to the impact of climate change in agriculture production have been expanding. However, there is a need to accelerate the scaling process of these practices and technologies in order to ensure growth of agriculture production and food security, increase income of farmers, make farming climate resilient, and contribute to global climate change mitigation. This book aims to provide basic information to researchers, managers, and technicians and extentionists at different levels on what CSA practices and technologies can be up scaled in different locations in Vietnam

An Evaluation of Programmatic Community-Based Chest X-ray Screening for Tuberculosis in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Across Asia, a large proportion of people with tuberculosis (TB) do not report symptoms, have mild symptoms or only experience symptoms for a short duration. These individuals may not seek care at health facilities or may be missed by symptom screening, resulting in sustained TB transmission in the community. We evaluated the yields of TB from 114 days of community-based, mobile chest X-ray (CXR) screening. The yields at each step of the TB screening cascade were tabulated and we compared cohorts of participants who reported having a prolonged cough and those reporting no cough or one of short duration. We estimated the marginal yields of TB using different diagnostic algorithms and calculated the relative diagnostic costs and cost per case for each algorithm. A total of 34,529 participants were screened by CXR, detecting 256 people with Xpert-positive TB. Only 50% of those diagnosed with TB were detected among participants reporting a prolonged cough. The study's screening algorithm detected almost 4 times as much TB as the National TB Program's standard diagnostic algorithm. Community-based, mobile chest X-ray screening can be a high yielding strategy which is able to identify people with TB who would likely otherwise have been missed by existing health services

Circulating Levels of Adiponectin, Leptin, Fetuin-A and Retinol-Binding Protein in Patients with Tuberculosis: Markers of Metabolism and Inflammation

BACKGROUND: Wasting is known as a prominent feature of tuberculosis (TB). To monitor the disease state, markers of metabolism and inflammation are potentially useful. We thus analyzed two major adipokines, adiponectin and leptin, and two other metabolic markers, fetuin-A and retinol-binding protein 4 (RBP4). METHODS: The plasma levels of these markers were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays in 84 apparently healthy individuals (=no-symptom group) and 46 patients with active pulmonary TB around the time of treatment, including at the midpoint evaluation (=active-disease group) and compared them with body mass index (BMI), C-reactive protein (CRP), chest radiographs and TB-antigen specific response by interferon-γ release assay (IGRA). RESULTS: In the no-symptom group, adiponectin and leptin showed negative and positive correlation with BMI respectively. In the active-disease group, at the time of diagnosis, leptin, fetuin-A and RBP4 levels were lower than in the no-symptom group [adjusted means 2.01 versus 4.50 ng/ml, P<0.0001; 185.58 versus 252.27 µg/ml, P<0.0001; 23.88 versus 43.79 µg/ml, P<0.0001, respectively]. High adiponectin and low leptin levels were associated with large infiltrates on chest radiographs even after adjustment for BMI and other covariates (P=0.0033 and P=0.0020). During treatment, adiponectin levels increased further and then decreased. Leptin levels remained low. Initial low levels of fetuin-A and RBP4 almost returned to the normal reference range in concert with reduced CRP. CONCLUSIONS: Our data and recent literature suggest that low fat store and underlying inflammation may regulate these metabolic markers in TB in a different way. Decreased leptin, increased adiponectin, or this ratio may be a promising marker for severity of the disease independent of BMI. We should further investigate pathological roles of the balance between these adipokines

Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment Inflows in Vietnam Before and After Vietnam's WTO Entry

[[abstract]]none[[abstract]]Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows plays an important role in creating jobs raising productivity technology and management knowledge transfer and long-term economic growth especially for developing countries Since the Vietnamese economic reforms in 1986 Vietnam’s economy has been quite successful in attracting FDI inflows Numerous studies have been investigated for the determinants of FDI inflows and the links between FDI inflows and other factors such as economic growth export import and trade human capital However most of studies focused on the contribution of FDI inflows to single factor There are limited studies that considered the determinants of FDI inflows especially in the case of Vietnam in recent years As is well known Vietnam were agreed to join WTO in 2006 and official entry in 2007 This study examines the development of FDI inflows and Vietnam’s economy and then explores the difference between the main determinants of FDI inflows in Vietnam by using annual time series data for two periods 1995-2006 and 2006-2011 The hypothesis and linear regression model are developed to identify the significance of each characteristic on the FDI Several dummy variables are also taken into account including ASEAN crisis Vietnam-US’s bilateral trade Vietnam’s WTO entry and global crisis The empirical results demonstrate that increases in market size GDP growth trade openness and exchange rate will lead to increase FDI inflows into Vietnam in both periods while human capital and inflation rate only have negative effects to FDI inflows in 1995-2006 Further ASEAN crisis Vietnam - US’s bilateral trade agreement and Vietnam’s WTO entry have positive sign and statistically significant related to FDI However the hypothesis of global financial crisis is not supported for significance in period of 2006-2011 Keywords: Foreign direct investment Asian financial crisis Vietnam WT