Promoting social network awareness: A social network monitoring system

To increase communication and collaboration opportunities, members of a community must be aware of the social networks that exist within that community. This paper describes a social network monitoring system – the KIWI system – that enables users to register their interactions and visualize their social networks. The system was implemented in a distributed research community and the results have shown that KIWI facilitates collecting information about social interactions. Furthermore, the visualization of the social networks, given as feedback, appeared to have a positive impact on the group, augmenting their social network awareness.     

Modeling NASA swarm-based systems: using agent-oriented software engineering and formal methods

The need to collect new data and perform new science is causing the complexity of NASA missions to continually increase. This complexity needs to be controlled via new technological advancements and balanced with a reduction in mission and operation costs. Planned and hypothesized missions involve self-management, biological-inspiration based on swarms, and autonomous operation as a means of achieving these goals. We consider a tailored software engineering approach to developing such systems based on agent-oriented software engineering and formal methods. We report on advances in modeling, implementing, and testing NASA swarm-based concept missions.     

A framework for building mobile single and multi-robot applications

The complexity of robot software systems calls for the use of a well-conceived architecture together with programming tools to support it. One common feature of robot architectures is the modular decomposition of systems into simpler and largely independent components. These components implement primitive actions and report events about their state. The robot programming framework proposed here includes a tool (RoboGraph) to program and coordinate the activity (tasks) of these middleware modules. Project developers use the same task programming IDE (RoboGraph) on two different levels. The first is to program tasks that must be executed autonomously by one robot and the second is to program tasks that can include several robots and building elements.Tasks are described using a Signal Interpreted Petri Net (SIPN) editor and stored in an xml file. A dispatcher loads these files and executes the different Petri nets as needed. A monitor that shows the state of all the running nets is very useful for debugging and tracing purposes. The whole system has been used in several applications: A tour-guide robot (GuideBot), a multi-robot surveillance project (WatchBot) and a hospital food and laundry transportation system based on mobile robots.     

Field evaluation of agronomic effectiveness of multi-nutrient fertilizer briquettes for upland crop production

Low nutrient recovery in upland crop production systems has prompted studies to improve the current nutrient management practices to increase fertilizer efficiency. Field studies were conducted in two growing seasons (2012 and 2013) under two land management systems (till and no-till) to evaluate agronomic effectiveness of a multi-nutrient fertilizer briquette (fertilizer briquettes) for upland crop production, using corn as test crop. The fertilizer briquettes were produced through a simple physical compaction of ordinary granular fertilizers with a final nutrient composition of 23.9% N, 19.2% P₂O₅, 19.1% K₂O, 0.9% Zn, and 2.5% S. The agronomic efficiency of the fertilizer briquettes were compared with commercial N sources, urea and ammonium sulfate supplied separately with phosphorus (P), potassium (K), zinc (Zn), and sulfur (S; for urea alone). During the wetter (2013) weather conditions, the fertilizer briquette treatment consistently produced the highest yields in both locations. At Ames Plantation, the fertilizer briquette treatment increased grain yields by ~ 16 and ~ 23% over the treatments having ammonium sulfate and urea granular fertilizers, respectively, and, in Jackson, by 16 and 34% respectively. Nutrient recovery efficiency was also greatest with the fertilizer briquettes treatment. However, during the drier weather conditions (2012), the fertilizer briquettes treatment was the least effective among the three treatments in terms of biomass and grain yields, and nutrient recovery efficiency. We conclude, with adequate rainfall conditions, the fertilizer briquettes could be an efficient fertilizer for upland crop production. However, under drier weather conditions where soil moisture is limited, the fertilizer briquettes may not be an ideal fertilizer source for upland crop production.     

Why friendly AIs won’t be that friendly: a friendly reply to Muehlhauser and Bostrom

In “Why We Need Friendly AI”, Luke Muehlhauser and Nick Bostrom propose that for our species to survive the impending rise of superintelligent AIs, we need to ensure that they would be human-friendly. This discussion note offers a more natural but bleaker outlook: that in the end, if these AIs do arise, they won’t be that friendly.

     

Structural Characterization and Electrochemical Performance of Zr1−xTixCr0.7Mo0.3Ni Alloys

JOM - Three specimens were synthesized presenting the following stoichiometry: Zr1?xTixCr0.7Mo0.3Ni (x?=?0.3; 0.5; 0.7). The substitution of zirconium atoms by a lower atomic...     

Climate anomalies and the increasing risk of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus illnesses

We examined the potential influence of climate anomalies in expanding the geographical and seasonal range of seafood-borne illnesses from Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus. Archived climate data from areas of implicated seafood production were obtained from various sources, including in situ monitoring devices and satellite imagery. The geographical expansion of V. parahaemolyticus outbreaks into Peru and Alaska corresponded closely with climate anomalies such as El Niño, which brought large masses of abnormally warm water into these regions. Seasonal expansion of V. vulnificus illnesses associated with oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico in April and November correspond with warmer water temperatures (>20 °C) recorded during these months since 1998. This retrospective review indicates that climate anomalies have already greatly expanded the risk area and season for vibrio illnesses and suggest that these events can be forecasted. Certainly, when similar circumstances occur in the future, adjustments in industry practices and regulatory policy should be considered, especially for seafood that is consumed raw, such as bivalve mollusks.     

A privacy-aware access control model for distributed network monitoring

In this paper, we introduce a new access control model that aims at addressing the privacy implications surrounding network monitoring. In fact, despite its importance, network monitoring is natively leakage-prone and, moreover, this is exacerbated due to the complexity of the highly dynamic monitoring procedures and infrastructures, that may include multiple traffic observation points, distributed mitigation mechanisms and even inter-operator cooperation. Conceived on the basis of data protection legislation, the proposed approach is grounded on a rich in expressiveness information model, that captures all the underlying monitoring concepts along with their associations. The model enables the specification of contextual authorisation policies and expressive separation and binding of duty constraints. Finally, two key innovations of our work consist in the ability to define access control rules at any level of abstraction and in enabling a verification procedure, which results in inherently privacy-aware workflows, thus fostering the realisation of the Privacy by Design vision.     

Dietary fatty acid intervention of lactating cows simultaneously affects lipid profiles of meat and milk

BACKGROUND: The present study investigated tissue‐specific responses of muscle and mammary gland to a 10 week intervention of German Holstein cows (n = 18) with three different dietary fat supplements (saturated fat; linseed oil or sunflower oil plus docosahexaenoic acid‐rich algae) by analysing fatty acid profiles and quality parameters of meat and milk. RESULTS: Plant oil/algae intervention affected neither fat content nor quality parameters of meat but decreased fat content and saturated fatty acid amounts of milk. Linseed oil/algae intervention caused significantly higher concentrations of C18:3n‐3 (meat, 1.0 g per 100 g; milk, 1.2 g per 100 g) and C22:6n‐3 (meat, 0.3 g per 100 g; milk, 0.14 g per 100 g). Sunflower oil/algae intervention increased n‐6 fatty acid contents in milk (4.0 g per 100 g) but not in meat. Elevated amounts of C18:1trans isomers and C18:1trans‐11 were found in meat and especially in milk of plant oil/algae‐fed cows. C18:1cis‐9 amounts were found to be increased in milk but decreased in meat after plant oil/algae intervention. CONCLUSION: The present study demonstrated that dietary fatty acid manipulation substantially shifted the fatty acid profiles of milk and to a lesser extent of meat, whereas meat quality traits were not affected. Indications of tissue‐specific responses of mammary gland and muscle were identified. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Highly Regio- and Stereoselective Diels-Alder Cycloadditions via Two-Step and Multicomponent Reactions Promoted by Infrared Irradiation under Solvent-Free Conditions

Infrared irradiation promoted the Diels-Alder cycloadditions of exo-2-oxazolidinone dienes 1-3 with the Knoevenagel adducts 4-6, as dienophiles, leading to the synthesis of new 3,5-diphenyltetrahydrobenzo[d]oxazol-2-one derivatives (7, 9, 11 and 13-17), under solvent-free conditions. These cycloadditions were performed with good regio- and stereoselectivity, favoring the para-endo cycloadducts. We also evaluated the one-pot three-component reaction of active methylene compounds 20, benzaldehydes 21 and exo-2-oxazolidinone diene 2 under the same reaction conditions. A cascade Knoevenagel condensation/Diels-Alder cycloaddition reaction was observed, resulting in the final adducts 13-16 in similar yields. These procedures are environmentally benign, because no solvent and no catalyst were employed in these processes. The regioselectivity of these reactions was rationalized by Frontier Molecular Orbital (FMO) calculations.