Hierarchical tactile sensation integration from prosthetic fingertips enables multi-texture surface recognition\u3csup\u3e†\u3c/sup\u3e

Multifunctional flexible tactile sensors could be useful to improve the control of prosthetic hands. To that end, highly stretchable liquid metal tactile sensors (LMS) were designed, manufactured via photolithography, and incorporated into the fingertips of a prosthetic hand. Three novel contributions were made with the LMS. First, individual fingertips were used to distinguish between different speeds of sliding contact with different surfaces. Second, differences in surface textures were reliably detected during sliding contact. Third, the capacity for hierarchical tactile sensor integration was demonstrated by using four LMS signals simultaneously to distinguish between ten complex multi-textured surfaces. Four different machine learning algorithms were compared for their successful classification capabilities: K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and neural network (NN). The time-frequency features of the LMSs were extracted to train and test the machine learning algorithms. The NN generally performed the best at the speed and texture detection with a single finger and had a 99.2 ± 0.8% accuracy to distinguish between ten different multi-textured surfaces using four LMSs from four fingers simultaneously. The capability for hierarchical multi-finger tactile sensation integration could be useful to provide a higher level of intelligence for artificial hands

Universidad y sociedad: comunicación e integración en empresas e instituciones públicas y organizaciones no lucrativas. Renovación y vanguardia

Depto. de Teorías y Análisis de la ComunicaciónFac. de Ciencias de la InformaciónFALSEsubmitte

Experimental analysis of soil and dust stabilizers for controlling displacement of contaminated soils by wind tunnel experiments

During the remediation of burial grounds at the US Department of Energy\u27s (DOE\u27s) Hanford Site in Washington State, the dispersion of contaminated soil particles and dust is an issue that is faced by site workers on a daily basis. This contamination problem is even more of a concern when one takes into account the semi-arid characteristics of the region where the site is located. To mitigate this problem, workers at the site use a variety of engineered methods to minimize the dispersion of contaminated soil and dust (i.e. use of water and/or suppression agents that stabilizes the soil prior to soil excavation, segregation, and removal activities). A primary contributor to the dispersion of contaminated soil and dust is wind soil erosion. The erosion process occurs when the wind speed exceeds a certain threshold value which depends on a number of factors including wind force loading, particle size, surface soil moisture, and the geometry of the soil. Thus under these circumstances, the mobility of contaminated soil and generation and dispersion of particulate matter are significantly influenced by these parameters. This dependence of soil and dust movement on threshold shear velocity, fixative dilution and/or application rates, soil moisture content, and soil geometry were studied for Hanford\u27s sandy soil through a series of wind tunnel experiments, laboratory experiments and theoretical analysis. In addition, the behavior of plutonium (Pu) powder contamination in the soil was studied by introducing a Pu simulant (cerium oxide). The results showed that soil dispersion and PM10 concentrations decreased with increasing soil moisture. Also, it was shown that the mobility of the soil was affected by increasing wind velocity. It was demonstrated that the use of fixative products greatly decreased the amount of soil and PM10 concentrations when exposed to varying wind conditions. In addition, it was shown that geometry of the soil sample affected the velocity profile and calculation of roughness surface coefficient when comparing round and flat soil samples. Finally, threshold shear velocities were calculated for soil with flat surface and their dependency on surface soil moisture was demonstrated. A theoretical framework was developed to explain these dependencies

Reestructuración organizacional de la Dirección de Agronegocios de la Federación Nacional de Cooperativas Agropecuarias y Agroindustriales (FENACOOP R.L.), para el período 2008-2010

La reestructuración de la dirección de Agronegociosde la Federación Nacional de Cooperativas Agropecuarias y Agroindustriales (FENACOOP RL.), se hace necesaria por razones que no se pueden obviar y sobre todo por que los asociados que recomiendan una considerable cantidad de nuevos servicios son la razón de ser de la FENACOOP; para la formulación de ésta propuesta se eligió entre varios tipos de estructuras organizacionales y la que mejor se apropia al quehacer de la federación es la que se presenta en éste documento. Los delegados regionales, presidentes o miembros de las juntas directivas de las Uniones y Centrales de cooperativas agrícolas, presidentes o miembros de las juntas directivas de las cooperativas agrícolas asociadas a la FENACOOP, fueron los elementos muestrales a los que se les aplicó el instrumento de investigación (encu esta), y de esa forma se obtuvo información valiosa para realizar el menú de servicios que brindará la dirección , con ésta nueva estructura organizacional se pretende que los cooperados tengan respuesta a todas sus necesidades y así lograr un mejor nivel d e vida de todas éstas familias, ya que podrán aumentar su producción y/o producir con calidad y comercializar a mejores precios. Para estimar los costos operativos de la dirección de Agronegociosde un mes y proyectarlo a un año, fue necesario conocer los costos operativos actuales de la FENACOOP; para proponer las prestaciones sociales se hizo uso de fórmulas que el Ministerio del Trabajo establece en el código laboral. Cabe señalar que en todo el proceso investigativo se contó con el respaldo de las personas vinculadas a la dirección de Agronegociosde la FENACOOP con el propósito de recolectar información veraz. Mencionamos algunos resultados de ésta propuesta: 1) la dirección de Agronegocios constará de tres secciones, cada una tendrá un responsable y c ada una desarrollará diferentes actividades pero que al final se busca lograr un fin común, 2) entre los servicios a brindar se enumeran: Información actualizada de precios, sobre la demanda y oferta de los productos vigentes e información técnica agronómica, asesoría legal; Capacitaciones agronómicas, empresariales y de proyectos; Trámites necesarios para comercializar la producción, gestión de trámites de exportación, gestión de financiamiento, 3) el tener un directorio a mano de las I nstituciones Guberna mentales y no Gubernamentales, Empresas Públicas o Privadas que tienen relación con los agronegocios sirve para ahorrar tiempo en la búsqueda de éste tipo de instituciones ya sea en las páginas amarillas, en internet o en panfletos. Se recomienda: 1) que l os dirigentes de la FENACOOP aprueben ésta propuesta y se ponga en marcha lo más pronto posible. 2) que la FENACOOP invierta en publicidad para dar a conocer los nuevos servicios, funciones y actividades de la dirección de Agronegocios, contenidas en ésta propuesta. 3) que la FENACOOP realice estrategias de alianzas con instituciones que tienen relación con los Agronegocios

SSM - Sistema de solicitudes municipales

Tesis (Ingeniero de Ejecución en Gestión Informática)El presente documento detalla la creación de un sistema web de apoyo a las municipalidades de Chile en lo que respecta a la recepción, seguimiento y respuesta de solicitudes realizadas por sus ciudadanos. El nombre de esta herramienta es SSM - Sistema de solicitudes municipales - y nace por iniciativa de la SUBDERE - Subsecretaria de Desarrollo Regional y Administtcitivo. Esta herramienta de apoyo va en directa ayuda de las municipalidades de nuestro país, para que cuenten con una forma eficiente de recibir y almacenar la información ingresada debido a Ia recepción de solicitudes ciudadanas junto con contar con el acceso a ella en cualquier momento y lugar para su consulta. Está desarrollada bajo los estrictos estándares que exige el gobierno para este tipo de sistemas web, utilizando las últimas técnicas en desarrollo web para la presentación de la información al usuario final, la denominada web 2.0

The Design and Implementation of a Secure Datastore Based on Ethereum Smart Contract

In this paper, we present a secure datastore based on an Ethereum smart contract. Our research is guided by three research questions. First, we will explore to what extend a smart-contract-based datastore should resemble a traditional database system. Second, we will investigate how to store the data in a smart-contract-based datastore for maximum flexibility while minimizing the gas consumption. Third, we seek answers regarding whether or not a smart-contract-based datastore should incorporate complex processing such as data encryption and data analytic algorithms. The proposed smart-contract-based datastore aims to strike a good balance between several constraints: (1) smart contracts are publicly visible, which may create a confidentiality concern for the data stored in the datastore; (2) unlike traditional database systems, the Ethereum smart contract programming language (i.e., Solidity) offers very limited data structures for data management; (3) all operations that mutate the blockchain state would incur financial costs and the developers for smart contracts must make sure sufficient gas is provisioned for every smart contract call, and ideally, the gas consumption should be minimized. Our investigation shows that although it is essential for a smart-contract-based datastore to offer some basic data query functionality, it is impractical to offer query flexibility that resembles that of a traditional database system. Furthermore, we propose that data should be structured as tag-value pairs, where the tag serves as a non-unique key that describes the nature of the value. We also conclude that complex processing should not be allowed in the smart contract due to the financial burden and security concerns. The tag-based secure datastore designed this way also defines its applicative perimeter, i.e., only applications that align with our strategy would find the proposed datastore a good fit. Those that would rather incur higher financial cost for more data query flexibility and/or less user burden on data pre- and post-processing would find the proposed database too restrictive

Securing Environmental IoT Data Using Masked Authentication Messaging Protocol in a DAG-Based Blockchain: IOTA Tangle

The demand for the digital monitoring of environmental ecosystems is high and growing rapidly as a means of protecting the public and managing the environment. However, before data, algorithms, and models can be mobilized at scale, there are considerable concerns associated with privacy and security that can negatively affect the adoption of technology within this domain. In this paper, we propose the advancement of electronic environmental monitoring through the capability provided by the blockchain. The blockchain’s use of a distributed ledger as its underlying infrastructure is an attractive approach to counter these privacy and security issues, although its performance and ability to manage sensor data must be assessed. We focus on a new distributed ledger technology for the IoT, called IOTA, that is based on a directed acyclic graph. IOTA overcomes the current limitations of the blockchain and offers a data communication protocol called masked authenticated messaging for secure data sharing among Internet of Things (IoT) devices. We show how the application layer employing the data communication protocol, MAM, can support the secure transmission, storage, and retrieval of encrypted environmental sensor data by using an immutable distributed ledger such as that shown in IOTA. Finally, we evaluate, compare, and analyze the performance of the MAM protocol against a non-protocol approach

Hierarchical Tactile Sensation Integration from Prosthetic Fingertips Enables Multi-Texture Surface Recognition

Multifunctional flexible tactile sensors could be useful to improve the control of prosthetic hands. To that end, highly stretchable liquid metal tactile sensors (LMS) were designed, manufactured via photolithography, and incorporated into the fingertips of a prosthetic hand. Three novel contributions were made with the LMS. First, individual fingertips were used to distinguish between different speeds of sliding contact with different surfaces. Second, differences in surface textures were reliably detected during sliding contact. Third, the capacity for hierarchical tactile sensor integration was demonstrated by using four LMS signals simultaneously to distinguish between ten complex multi-textured surfaces. Four different machine learning algorithms were compared for their successful classification capabilities: K-nearest neighbor (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), random forest (RF), and neural network (NN). The time-frequency features of the LMSs were extracted to train and test the machine learning algorithms. The NN generally performed the best at the speed and texture detection with a single finger and had a 99.2 ± 0.8% accuracy to distinguish between ten different multi-textured surfaces using four LMSs from four fingers simultaneously. The capability for hierarchical multi-finger tactile sensation integration could be useful to provide a higher level of intelligence for artificial hands

PyLEnM: A Machine Learning Framework for Long-Term Groundwater Contamination Monitoring Strategies.

In this study, we have developed a comprehensive machine learning (ML) framework for long-term groundwater contamination monitoring as the Python package PyLEnM (Python for Long-term Environmental Monitoring). PyLEnM aims to establish the seamless data-to-ML pipeline with various utility functions, such as quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC), coincident/colocated data identification, the automated ingestion and processing of publicly available spatial data layers, and novel data summarization/visualization. The key ML innovations include (1) time series/multianalyte clustering to find the well groups that have similar groundwater dynamics and to inform spatial interpolation and well optimization, (2) the automated model selection and parameter tuning, comparing multiple regression models for spatial interpolation, (3) the proxy-based spatial interpolation method by including spatial data layers or in situ measurable variables as predictors for contaminant concentrations and groundwater levels, and (4) the new well optimization algorithm to identify the most effective subset of wells for maintaining the spatial interpolation ability for long-term monitoring. We demonstrate our methodology using the monitoring data at the Savannah River Site F-Area. Through this open-source PyLEnM package, we aim to improve the transparency of data analytics at contaminated sites, empowering concerned citizens as well as improving public relations