Automatic Path Planning for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Using UAV Imagery

Field machines play an important role in the management of agricultural environments. Increasing use of automated machines in precision agriculture has gained significant attention of farmers and industries to minimize human work load to perform tasks such as land preparation, seeding, fertilizing, plant health monitoring and harvesting. Path planning is considered as a fundamental step for agricultural machines equipped with autonomous navigation system. For mountain vineyards, path planning is a big challenge due to terrain morphology and unstructured vineyards. This paper proposes a workflow to generate an automatic coverage path plan for unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) using georeferenced imagery taken by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). First, image acquisition is performed over a vineyard to generate an orthomosaic and a digital surface model, which are then used to identify the vine rows and inter-row terrain. This information is then used by the algorithm to generate a path plan for UGV

Pediatric Cushing disease: disparities in disease severity and outcomes in the Hispanic and African-American populations.

BackgroundLittle is known about the contribution of racial and socioeconomic disparities to severity and outcomes in children with Cushing disease (CD).MethodsA total of 129 children with CD, 45 Hispanic/Latino or African-American (HI/AA) and 84 non-Hispanic White (non-HW), were included in this study. A 10-point index for rating severity (CD severity) incorporated the degree of hypercortisolemia, glucose tolerance, hypertension, anthropomorphic measurements, disease duration, and tumor characteristics. Race, ethnicity, age, gender, local obesity prevalence, estimated median income, and access to care were assessed in regression analyses of CD severity.ResultsThe mean CD severity in the HI/AA group was worse than that in the non-HW group (4.9±2.0 vs. 4.1±1.9, P=0.023); driving factors included higher cortisol levels and larger tumor size. Multiple regression models confirmed that race (P=0.027) and older age (P=0.014) were the most important predictors of worse CD severity. When followed up a median of 2.3 years after surgery, the relative risk for persistent CD combined with recurrence was 2.8 times higher in the HI/AA group compared with that in the non-HW group (95% confidence interval: 1.2-6.5).ConclusionOur data show that the driving forces for the discrepancy in severity of CD are older age and race/ethnicity. Importantly, the risk for persistent and recurrent CD was higher in minority children

Opinion on 'Responsible Dual Use' Political, Security, Intelligence and Military Research of Concern in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology

Current and newly emerging insights and technologies arising from research in brain sciences increase capabilities to access, assess and affect thought, emotion and behaviour. While much of this research and development is directed towards clinical use, it also has applications in other settings, notably in the political, security, intelligence and military (PSIM) domains. This is often referred to in terms of ‘Dual Use’. Many of these potential uses raise important social and ethical questions which demand the attention of all those involved in the research, administration, management and regulation of neuroscience research and related technological developments, including those in information and communication technologies (ICT) and robotics. In this Opinion, we suggest that we can increase our ability to identify which programmes and projects of research, development and innovation are ‘of concern’ by applying the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) to the concept of ‘dual use’ and distinguishing between ‘responsible’ and ‘irresponsible’ systems of research and technological development. We therefore use the term ‘dual use research of concern’ (DURC) to refer to neuroscience research and technological innovations, and brain inspired developments in information and communication technologies, for use in the political, security, intelligence and military domains, which are either directly of concern because of their potential for use in ways that threaten the peace, health, safety, security and well-being of citizens, or are undertaken without responsible regard to such potential uses. To ensure ongoing attention to these issues, the Opinion proposes recommendations for the Human Brain Project, the European Union and the wider neuroscience and ICT community

Collapse Models

This is a review of formalisms and models (nonrelativistic and relativistic) which modify Schrodinger's equation so that it describes wavefunction collapse as a dynamical physical process.Comment: 40 pages, to be published in "Open Systems and Measurement in Relativistic Quantum Theory," F. Petruccione and H. P. Breuer eds. (Springer Verlag, 1999

SEIS: Insight's Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure of Mars.

By the end of 2018, 42 years after the landing of the two Viking seismometers on Mars, InSight will deploy onto Mars' surface the SEIS (Seismic Experiment for Internal Structure) instrument; a six-axes seismometer equipped with both a long-period three-axes Very Broad Band (VBB) instrument and a three-axes short-period (SP) instrument. These six sensors will cover a broad range of the seismic bandwidth, from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz, with possible extension to longer periods. Data will be transmitted in the form of three continuous VBB components at 2 sample per second (sps), an estimation of the short period energy content from the SP at 1 sps and a continuous compound VBB/SP vertical axis at 10 sps. The continuous streams will be augmented by requested event data with sample rates from 20 to 100 sps. SEIS will improve upon the existing resolution of Viking's Mars seismic monitoring by a factor of ∼ 2500 at 1 Hz and ∼ 200 000 at 0.1 Hz. An additional major improvement is that, contrary to Viking, the seismometers will be deployed via a robotic arm directly onto Mars' surface and will be protected against temperature and wind by highly efficient thermal and wind shielding. Based on existing knowledge of Mars, it is reasonable to infer a moment magnitude detection threshold of M w ∼ 3 at 40 ∘ epicentral distance and a potential to detect several tens of quakes and about five impacts per year. In this paper, we first describe the science goals of the experiment and the rationale used to define its requirements. We then provide a detailed description of the hardware, from the sensors to the deployment system and associated performance, including transfer functions of the seismic sensors and temperature sensors. We conclude by describing the experiment ground segment, including data processing services, outreach and education networks and provide a description of the format to be used for future data distribution.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s11214-018-0574-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Assessing responsible innovation training

There is broad agreement that one important aspect of responsible innovation (RI) is to provide training on its principles and practices to current and future researchers and innovators, notably including doctoral students. Much less agreement can be observed concerning the question of what this training should consist of, how it should be delivered and how it could be assessed. The increasing institutional embedding of RI leads to calls for the alignment of RI training with training in other subjects. One can therefore observe a push towards the official assessment of RI training, for example in the recent call for proposals for centres for doctoral training by UK Research and Innovation. This editorial article takes its point of departure from the recognition that the RI community will need to react to the call for assessment of RI training. It provides an overview of the background and open questions around RI training and assessment as a background of examples of RI training assessment at doctoral level. There is unlikely to be one right way of assessing RI training across institutions and disciplines, but we expect that the examples provided in this article can help RI scholars and practitioners orient their training and its assessment in ways that are academically viable as well as supportive of the overall aims of RI

ASPM and microcephalin expression in epithelial ovarian cancer correlates with tumour grade and survival

BACKGROUND: The clinico-pathological and molecular heterogeneity of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) complicates its early diagnosis and successful treatment. Highly aneuploid tumours and the presence of ascitic fluids are hallmarks of EOC. Two microcephalyassociated proteins, abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associated protein (ASPM) and microcephalin, are involved in mitosis and DNA damage repair. Their expression is deregulated at the RNA level in EOC. Here, ASPM and microcephalin protein expression in primary cultures established from the ascites of patients with EOC was determined and correlated with clinical data to assess their suitability as biomarkers. METHODS: Five established ovarian cancer cell lines, cells derived from two benign ovarian ascites samples and 40 primary cultures of EOC derived from ovarian ascites samples were analysed by protein slot blotting and/or immunofluorescence to determine ASPM and microcephalin protein levels and their cellular localisation. Results were correlated with clinico-pathological data. RESULTS: A statistically significant correlation was identified for ASPM localisation and tumour grade, with high levels of cytoplasmic ASPM correlating with grade 1 tumours. Conversely, cytoplasmic microcephalin was only identified in high-grade tumours. Furthermore, low levels of nuclear microcephalin correlated with reduced patient survival. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that ASPM and microcephalin have the potential to be biomarkers in ovarian cance

Current concepts of polymicrogyria

Polymicrogyria is one of the most common malformations of cortical development. It has been known for many years and its clinical and MRI manifestations are well described. Recent advances in imaging, however, have revealed that polymicrogyria has many different appearances on MR imaging, suggesting that is may be a more heterogeneous malformation than previously suspected. The clinical and imaging heterogeneity of polymicrogyria is explored in this review