Minesweepers: Towards a Landmine-Free Egypt, an Outdoor Humanitarian Demining Robotic Competition

Listed as one of the most contaminated countries in the world, Egypt has an estimated 22.7 million landmines and other explosive remnants of war. In order to foster the research, development and application of robotics in humanitarian demining in Egypt, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Robotics and Automation Society – Egypt Chapter organized Minesweepers: Towards a Landmine-Free Egypt, an outdoor robotic competition hosted by the German University in Cairo from 15–17 September 2012

Market-Based Approach to Mobile Surveillance Systems

The active surveillance of public and private sites is increasingly becoming a very important and critical issue. It is, therefore, imperative to develop mobile surveillance systems to protect these sites. Modern surveillance systems encompass spatially distributed mobile and static sensors in order to provide effective monitoring of persistent and transient objects and events in a given area of interest (AOI). The realization of the potential of mobile surveillance requires the solution of different challenging problems such as task allocation, mobile sensor deployment, multisensor management, cooperative object detection and tracking, decentralized data fusion, and interoperability and accessibility of system nodes. This paper proposes a market-based approach that can be used to handle different problems of mobile surveillance systems. Task allocation and cooperative target tracking are studied using the proposed approach as two challenging problems of mobile surveillance systems. These challenges are addressed individually and collectively

Prodrugs of Acyclovir - A Computational Approach

Density functional theory calculation results demonstrated that the efficiency of the acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of Kirby’s acid amides 1–15 is strongly dependent on the substitution on the C–C double bond and the nature of the amide N-alkyl group. Further, the results established that while in the gas phase the hydrolysis rate-limiting step is the tetrahedral intermediate formation in polar solvents such as water, the rate-limiting step could be either the formation or the collapse of the tetrahedral intermediate depending on the substitution on the C–C double bond and on the amide nitrogen substituent. Based on a linear correlation between the calculated and experimental effective molarities, the study on the systems reported herein could provide a good basis for designing prodrug systems that are less hydrophilic than their parental drugs and can be used, in different dosage forms, to release the parent drug in a controlled manner. For example, based on the calculated log effective molarities values, the predicted t1/2 (a time needed for 50% of the reactant to be hydrolyzed to products) for acyclovir prodrugs, ProD 1–4, was 29.2 h, 6097 days, 4.6 min, and 8.34 h, respectively. Hence, the rate by which acyclovir prodrug releases acyclovir can be determined according to the structural features of the linker (Kirby’s acid amide moiety).The Karaman Co. is thanked for support of our computational facilities. Special thanks are also given to Angi Karaman, Donia Karaman, Rowan Karaman, and Nardene Karaman for technical assistance

Remote interaction with mobile robots

This paper describes an architecture, which can be used to build remote laboratories to interact remotely via Internet with mobile robots using different interaction devices. A supervisory control strategy has been used to develop the remote laboratory in order to alleviate high communication data rates and system sensitivity to network delays. The users interact with the remote system at a more abstract level using high level commands. The local robot's autonomy has been increased by encapsulating all the robot's behaviors in different types of skills. User interfaces have been designed using visual proxy pattern to facilitate any future extension or code reuse. The developed remote laboratory has been integrated into an educational environment in the field of indoor mobile robotics. This environment is currently being used as a part of an international project to develop a distributed laboratory for autonomous and teleoperated systems (IECAT, 2003).Publicad

Intelligent Systems in Context-Based Distributed Information Fusion

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Removal of diclofenac potassium from wastewater using clay-micelle complex

The presence of an ionized carboxyl group in the widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug diclofenac potassium results in a high mobility of diclofenac and in its low sorption under conditions of slow sand filtration or subsoil passage. No diclofenac degradation was detected in pure water or sludge during one month. Tertiary treatments of wastewater indicated that the effective removal of diclofenac was by reverse osmosis, but the removal by activated carbon was less satisfactory. This study presents an efficient method for the removal of diclofenac from water by micelle–clay composites that are positively charged, have a large surface area and include large hydrophobic domains. Adsorption of diclofenac in dispersion by charcoal and a composite micelle (otadecyltrimethylammonium [ODTMA] and clay [montmorillonite]) was investigated. Analysis by the Langmuir isotherm revealed that charcoal had a somewhat larger number of adsorption sites than the composite, but the latter had a significantly larger binding affinity for diclofenac. Filtration experiments on a solution containing 300 ppm diclofenac demonstrated poor removal by activated carbon, in contrast to very efficient removal by micelle–clay filters. In the latter case the weight of removed diclofenac exceeded half that of ODTMA in the filter. Filtration of diclofenac solutions at concentrations of 8 and 80 ppb yielded almost complete removal at flow rates of 30 and 60mLmin−1. One kilogram of ODTMA in the micelle–clay filter has been estimated to remove more than 99% of diclofenac from a solution of 100 ppb during passage of more than 100m3.Beit-Jala Pharmaceutical Co. is thanked for the supply of diclofenac potassium. Special thanks to Dr. Saleh Abu-Lafi for technical assistance. This work was supported by a grant from the USAID-MERC program

Awareness and factors influencing breast reconstruction in the Gaza Strip: a cross-sectional study

Background Women are usually given two options after a mastectomy. They can either wear a prosthesis or have a breast reconstruction. Unfortunately, many women in the Gaza Strip are unaware of these options. The aim of this study was to shed light on the awareness and sociocultural factors in women who underwent mastectomy before choosing between options. Methods In this cross-sectional study, we recruited patients who underwent mastectomy in the Gaza Strip. All participants completed a face-to-face questionnaire between Aug 1, 2015, and April 30, 2016. Verbal consent was obtained from all participants. Findings 173 women with a mean age 51 years (SD 10) were enrolled in this study. 90 (52%) women had low income, and 36 (21%) women had a first-degree relative with breast cancer. 133 (77%) women underwent radical mastectomy, and 29 (17%) women had breast-conserving surgery. 96 (55

Automating the Achievement of SDGs: Robotics Enabling & Inhibiting the Accomplishment of the SDGs

The role of robotics is rapidly growing in importance in the particular non-industrial application domains, affecting society, economy and the environment. Robot systems are typically developed to address a specific technical, service-type or economical need, but often their broader impact is insufficiently investigated, if at all. For robots to play a beneficial role at society-level in the future, it is important to identify the mainstream directions in the field that enable the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and encourage their development. Similarly, it is required to understand the negative impacts some applications can have on the achievement of the SDGs, and to ensure societies have the ability to prevent or mitigate them. Inspired by an exploration of the role of artificial intelligence in achieving the SDGs, this paper presents a preliminary version of a consensus-based expert elicitation process on the role of robots - as enabler or inhibitor - for a more sustainable future. For every SDG, the authors were able to identify potential positive and negative impacts of robotics. It remains difficult, though, to sketch a simple and comprehensive overview of the different ways in which robotic applications can unfold (direct or indirect) impact. Existing projects and studies are not intuitively comparable because they take many different directions and are not at the same level of abstraction, technological readiness, or implementation. Derived from the findings, recommendations on future policy developments are considered