Autonomous Robotic System using Non-Destructive Evaluation methods for Bridge Deck Inspection

Bridge condition assessment is important to maintain the quality of highway roads for public transport. Bridge deterioration with time is inevitable due to aging material, environmental wear and in some cases, inadequate maintenance. Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods are preferred for condition assessment for bridges, concrete buildings, and other civil structures. Some examples of NDE methods are ground penetrating radar (GPR), acoustic emission, and electrical resistivity (ER). NDE methods provide the ability to inspect a structure without causing any damage to the structure in the process. In addition, NDE methods typically cost less than other methods, since they do not require inspection sites to be evacuated prior to inspection, which greatly reduces the cost of safety related issues during the inspection process. In this paper, an autonomous robotic system equipped with three different NDE sensors is presented. The system employs GPR, ER, and a camera for data collection. The system is capable of performing real-time, cost-effective bridge deck inspection, and is comprised of a mechanical robot design and machine learning and pattern recognition methods for automated steel rebar picking to provide realtime condition maps of the corrosive deck environments

The Junior Giants program in underserved African-American California communities

Major League Baseball has recently experienced a decline of black players to levels not\ud seen since integration. Theories for decline are reviewed including limited economic\ud resources for black players and lack of person-organization fit between black athletes and careers as a professional baseball player. The Junior Giants program, sponsored by the San Francisco Giants Community Fund, was reviewed to determine its potential to\ud address these deterrents. I hypothesized that the program would demonstrate rates of\ud black players consistent with black populations of its communities, but that Leagues\ud located in black communities would perform lower on both subjective and objective\ud measures. Leagues in black communities showed higher rates of black players, and\ud performed lower on subjective measures, supporting these hypotheses. However, contrary to expectations, results showed no significant difference of objective measures based on black population. These results have practical implications for the GCF and MLB, and can be used as a foundation for future interventions

Engaging Communities in Reducing Gun Violence: A Road Map for Safer Communities

Groundbreaking research by Benenson Strategy Group (BSG) and Lester and Associates was released on April 28, 2016 alongside a policy roadmap that lays out a series of proposed policy solutions for gun violence based on conversations with community stakeholders in Richmond, VA, Milwaukee, WI, and Stockton, CA. The research and report grew out of a project launched last year by The Joint Center for Economic and Political Studies, The Urban Institute and The Joyce Foundation. The study found that African Americans and Latinos believe that fixing the gun violence crisis in the United States is a pathway to addressing issues with the criminal justice system, including police-community relationships and mass incarceration

Engaging Communities in Reducing Gun Violence: A Road Map to Safer Communities

Gun violence inflicts a devastating toll on communities of color, but the justice system response to this violence frequently destabilizes neighborhoods and damages police-community relations. To develop a better response, the Urban Institute, Joyce Foundation, and Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies convened more than 100 people from communities affected by violence. We learned that violence prevention demands a holistic set of solutions. Limiting access to firearms is part of the solution, but a comprehensive strategy will also require improving police-community relations, investing in community services, and facilitating community leadership in violence prevention efforts

Genetic integrity of the Dark European honey bee (Apis mellifera mellifera) from protected populations: a genome-wide assessment using SNPs and mtDNA sequence data

The recognition that the Dark European honey bee, Apis mellifera mellifera, is increasingly threatened in its native range has led to the establishment of conservation programmes and protected areas throughout western Europe. Previous molecular surveys showed that, despite management strategies to preserve the genetic integrity of A. m. mellifera, protected populations had a measurable component of their gene pool derived from commercial C-lineage honey bees. Here we used both sequence data from the tRNAleu-cox2 intergenic mtDNA region and a genome-wide scan, with over 1183 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), to assess genetic diversity and introgression levels in several protected populations of A. m. mellifera, which were then compared with samples collected from unprotected populations. MtDNA analysis of the protected populations revealed a single colony bearing a foreign haplotype, whereas SNPs showed varying levels of introgression ranging from virtually zero in Norway to about 14% in Denmark. Introgression overall was higher in unprotected (30%) than in protected populations (8%), and is reflected in larger SNP diversity levels of the former, although opposite diversity levels were observed for mtDNA. These results suggest that, despite controlled breeding, some protected populations still require adjustments to the management strategies to further purge foreign alleles, which can be identified by SNPs.Pint

Padrões de variação materna da abelha Ibérica: um estudo de fina resolução espacial

Estudos prévios usando diferentes marcadores do ADN mitocondrial sugerem que a Península Ibérica tem sido uma área de contacto secundário natural entre duas linhagens divergentes de abelhas (linhagem Africana e linhagem da Europa ocidental) formando um cline com orientação sudoeste-nordeste. Porém, é provável que com a crescente intensificação da actividade apícola haja uma alteração do padrão de diversidade moldado pelas forças evolutivas ao longo de milhares de anos. Nesta comunicação o padrão de variação materna é representado espacialmente usando dados de sequenciação da região intergénica tRNAleu-cox2 do mtDNA obtidos para 711 colónias recentemente amostradas ao longo de três transeptos com orientação norte-sul (costa Atlântica, região central e costa Mediterrânica). Este estudo constitui a mais recente e completa representação espacial da diversidade materna à escala de toda Península Ibérica permitindo uma avaliação da influência dos processos antropogénicos (como por exemplo transumância e introdução de rainhas exóticas) na composição genética materna da abelha ibérica.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologi

Effect of linkage disequilibrium on inferences of population structure and introgression of iberian and black honey bees

Identification of population structure, a primary goal in population genetics, is easily performed because there is a number of methods available, implemented by user-friendly software packages. However, the user must be cautious when inferring population structure because spurious results may be obtained when there is strong linkage disequilibrium. With recent development of high-density SNPs we have now more power to interrogate the honey bee genome. However, the greater the number of loci genotyped the greater the chance of scoring loci that are linked. In addition, events such as population bottleneck, small effective population size, genetic drift, and admixture may also generate strong linkage disequilibrium. According to Kaeuffer et al. (2007), correlation rLD is the best way to deal with linkage disequilibrium. These authors recommend removing loci with rLD higher than 0.5 when inferring structure. In this study we used the GoldenGate Assay of Illumina to genotype over 1221 loci in individuals sampled from populations of A.m. iberiensis and A.m. mellifera. In this dataset we used the genetic distance between SNPs and rLD to test the effect of linkage in the number of clusters and the introgression level inferred by the clustering method implemented in the software STRUCTURE.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologi