Design and Evaluation of IoT-Enabled Instrumentation for a Soil-Bentonite Slurry Trench Cutoff Wall

In this work, we describe our approach and experiences bringing an instrumented soil-bentonite slurry trench cutoff wall into a modern IoT data collection and visualization pipeline. Soil-bentonite slurry trench cutoff walls have long been used to control ground water flow and contaminant transport. A Raspberry Pi computer on site periodically downloads the sensor data over a serial interface from an industrial datalogger and transmits the data wirelessly to a gateway computer located 1.3 km away using a reliable transmission protocol. The resulting time-series data is stored in a MongoDB database and data is visualized in real-time by a custom web application. The system has been in operation for over two years achieving 99.42% reliability and no data loss from the collection, transport, or storage of data. This project demonstrates the successful bridging of legacy scientific instrumentation with modern IoT technologies and approaches to gain timely web-based data visualization facilitating rapid data analysis without negatively impacting data integrity or reliability. The instrumentation system has proven extremely useful in understanding the changes in the stress state over time and could be deployed elsewhere as a means of on-demand slurry trench cutoff wall structural health monitoring for real-time stress detection linked to hydraulic conductivity or adapted for other infrastructure monitoring applications

The global integrated world ocean assessment: linking observations to science and policy across multiple scales

In 2004, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly approved a Regular Process to report on the environmental, economic and social aspects of the world's ocean. The Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects produced the first global integrated assessment of the marine environment in December 2016 (known as the first World Ocean Assessment). The second assessment, to be delivered in December 2020, will build on the baselines included in the first assessment, with a focus on establishing trends in the marine environment with relevance to global reporting needs such as those associated with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Central to the assessment process and its outputs are two components. First, is the utilization of ocean observation and monitoring outputs and research to temporally assess physical, chemical, biological, social, economic and cultural components of coastal and marine environments to establish their current state, impacts currently affecting coastal and marine environments, responses to those impacts and associated ongoing trends. Second, is the knowledge brokering of ocean observations and associated research to provide key information that can be utilized and applied to address management and policy needs at local, regional and global scales. Through identifying both knowledge gaps and capacity needs, the assessment process also provides direction to policy makers for the future development and deployment of sustained observation systems that are required for enhancing knowledge and supporting national aspirations associated with the sustainable development of coastal and marine ecosystems. Input from the ocean observation community, managers and policy makers is critical for ensuring that the vital information required for supporting the science policy interface objectives of the Regular Process is included in the assessment. This community white paper discusses developments in linking ocean observations and science with policy achieved as part of the assessment process, and those required for providing strategic linkages into the future.Agência financiadora - United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Seainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

LORIS: a web-based data management system for multi-center studies

Longitudinal Online Research and Imaging System (LORIS) is a modular and extensible web-based data management system that integrates all aspects of a multi-center study: from heterogeneous data acquisition (imaging, clinical, behavior, and genetics) to storage, processing, and ultimately dissemination. It provides a secure, user-friendly, and streamlined platform to automate the flow of clinical trials and complex multi-center studies. A subject-centric internal organization allows researchers to capture and subsequently extract all information, longitudinal or cross-sectional, from any subset of the study cohort. Extensive error-checking and quality control procedures, security, data management, data querying, and administrative functions provide LORIS with a triple capability (1) continuous project coordination and monitoring of data acquisition (2) data storage/cleaning/querying, (3) interface with arbitrary external data processing “pipelines.” LORIS is a complete solution that has been thoroughly tested through a full 10 year life cycle of a multi-center longitudinal project1 and is now supporting numerous international neurodevelopment and neurodegeneration research projects

Investigating the relation between striatal volume and IQ.

The volume of the input region of the basal ganglia, the striatum, is reduced with aging and in a number of conditions associated with cognitive impairment. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relation between the volume of striatum and general cognitive ability in a sample of 303 healthy children that were sampled to be representative of the population of the United States. Correlations between the WASI-IQ and the left striatum, composed of the caudate nucleus and putamen, were significant. When these data were analyzed separately for male and female children, positive correlations were significant for the left striatum in male children only. This brain structure-behavior relation further promotes the increasingly accepted view that the striatum is intimately involved in higher order cognitive functions. Our results also suggest that the importance of these brain regions in cognitive ability might differ for male and female children