Sensor Integration for Smart Cities Using Multi-Hop Networks

Smart Cities are designed to be living systems and turn urban dwellers life more comfortable and interactive by keeping them aware of what surrounds them, while leaving a greener footprint. The Future Cities Project [1] aims to create infrastructures for research in smart cities including a vehicular network, the BusNet, and an environmental sensor platform, the Urban Sense. Vehicles within the BusNet are equipped with On Board Units (OBUs) that offer free Wi-Fi to passengers and devices near the street. The Urban Sense platform is composed by a set of Data Collection Units (DCUs) that include a set of sensors measuring environmental parameters such as air pollution, meteorology and noise. The Urban Sense platform is expanding and receptive to add new sensors to the platform. The parnership with companies like TNL were made and the need to monitor garbage street containers emerged as air pollution prevention. If refuse collection companies know prior to the refuse collection which route is the best to collect the maximum amount of garbage with the shortest path, they can reduce costs and pollution levels are lower, leaving behind a greener footprint. This dissertation work arises in the need to monitor the garbage street containers and integrate these sensors into an Urban Sense DCU. Due to the remote locations of the garbage street containers, a network extension to the vehicular network had to be created. This dissertation work also focus on the Multi-hop network designed to extend the vehicular network coverage area to the remote garbage street containers. In locations where garbage street containers have access to the vehicular network, Roadside Units (RSUs) or Access Points (APs), the Multi-hop network serves has a redundant path to send the data collected from DCUs to the Urban Sense cloud database. To plan this highly dynamic network, the Wi-Fi Planner Tool was developed. This tool allowed taking measurements on the field that led to an optimized location of the Multi-hop network nodes with the use of radio propagation models. This tool also allowed rendering a temperature-map style overlay for Google Earth [2] application. For the DCU for garbage street containers the parner company provided the access to a HUB (device that communicates with the sensor inside the garbage containers). The Future Cities use the Raspberry pi as a platform for the DCUs. To collect the data from the HUB a RS485 to RS232 converter was used at the physical level and the Modbus protocol at the application level. To determine the location and status of the vehicles whinin the vehicular network a TCP Server was developed. This application was developed for the OBUs providing the vehicle Global Positioning System (GPS) location as well as information of when the vehicle is stopped, moving, on idle or even its slope. To implement the Multi-hop network on the field some scripts were developed such as pingLED and “shark”. These scripts helped upon node deployment on the field as well as to perform all the tests on the network. Two setups were implemented on the field, an urban setup was implemented for a Multi-hop network coverage survey and a sub-urban setup was implemented to test the Multi-hop network routing protocols, Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) and Babel

Effect of the Combined Intervention with Passive Whole-Body Vibration and Auriculotherapy on the Quality of Life of Individuals with Knee Osteoarthritis Assessed by the WHOQOL-Bref: A Multi-Arm Clinical Trial

The aim of this study was to determine the effect on the quality of life of two non-pharmacological interventions isolated or in combination: (i) passive whole-body vibration exercise (WBVE), and (ii) auriculotherapy (AT). One hundred three participants with knee osteoarthritis (KOA) were allocated to: (a) a vibration group (WBVEG; n = 17) that performed WBVE (peak-to-peak displacement: 2.5 to 7.5 mm, frequency: 5 to 14 Hz, Peak acceleration: 0.12 to 2.95 g), two days/weekly for five weeks, (b) an AT group (ATG; n = 21), stimulation of three specific auriculotherapy points (Kidney, Knee and Shenmen) in each ear pavilion, (c) WBVE + AT (WBVE + AT; n = 20) and (d) respective control groups (WBVE_CG, n = 15; AT_CG, n = 12; WBVE + AT_CG, n = 18). The participants filled out the WHOQOL-bref Questionnaire before the first and after the last sessions. Statistical differences in the various domains of the WHOQOL-bref were not found. In conclusion, WBVE or AT alone or combined did not contribute in altering the quality of life of individuals exposed to these interventions

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Educomunicação e suas áreas de intervenção: Novos paradigmas para o diálogo intercultural

oai:omp.abpeducom.org.br:publicationFormat/1O material aqui divulgado representa, em essência, a contribuição do VII Encontro Brasileiro de Educomunicação ao V Global MIL Week, da UNESCO, ocorrido na ECA/USP, entre 3 e 5 de novembro de 2016. Estamos diante de um conjunto de 104 papers executivos, com uma média de entre 7 e 10 páginas, cada um. Com este rico e abundante material, chegamos ao sétimo e-book publicado pela ABPEducom, em seus seis primeiros anos de existência. A especificidade desta obra é a de trazer as “Áreas de Intervenção” do campo da Educomunicação, colocando-as a serviço de uma meta essencial ao agir educomunicativo: o diálogo intercultural, trabalhado na linha do tema geral do evento internacional: Media and Information Literacy: New Paradigms for Intercultural Dialogue

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Agroecological coffee management increases arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi diversity.

Agroecology aims to maintain ecosystem services by minimizing the impact of agriculture and promoting the use of biological potential. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are elements which are key to improving crop productivity and soil quality. It is pertinent to understand how agricultural management in the tropics affects the AMF spatio-temporal community composition, especially in crops of global importance, such as coffee (Coffea arabica L.). Soil and root samples were collected from three localities under three management systems (agroecological, conventional and forest fragment), during the phenological stages of coffee (flowering, grain filling, harvesting). Spores were extracted for morphological identification and molecular community analysis by PCR-DGGE. Dendrograms were prepared and the bands were sequenced and analyzed by bioinformatics. No differences were observed in the richness of morphospecies between management systems, localities and period, but little is known about tropical species. Molecular analysis showed that the agroecological management system was similar to natural forest and with a higher diversity indices than conventional management. Locality and period of sample affect AMF community composition. It is necessary to associate classical taxonomic evaluations with molecular biological techniques because different approaches can lead to different outcomes. This study contributes to the understanding of the impact of agriculture management systems on AMF and provides evidence that agroecology is a management system applicable to sustainable coffee production

Agroecological coffee management increases arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi diversity

Agroecology aims to maintain ecosystem services by minimizing the impact of agriculture and promoting the use of biological potential. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are elements which are key to improving crop productivity and soil quality. It is pertinent to understand how agricultural management in the tropics affects the AMF spatio-temporal community composition, especially in crops of global importance, such as coffee (Coffea arabica L.). Soil and root samples were collected from three localities under three management systems (agroecological, conventional and forest fragment), during the phenological stages of coffee (flowering, grain filling, harvesting). Spores were extracted for morphological identification and molecular community analysis by PCR–DGGE. Dendrograms were prepared and the bands were sequenced and analyzed by bioinformatics. No differences were observed in the richness of morphospecies between management systems, localities and period, but little is known about tropical species. Molecular analysis showed that the agroecological management system was similar to natural forest and with a higher diversity indices than conventional management. Locality and period of sample affect AMF community composition. It is necessary to associate classical taxonomic evaluations with molecular biological techniques because different approaches can lead to different outcomes. This study contributes to the understanding of the impact of agriculture management systems on AMF and provides evidence that agroecology is a management system applicable to sustainable coffee production

Núcleos de Ensino da Unesp: artigos 2012: volume 6: formação de professores e trabalho docente

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES