133,139 research outputs found
Central banks and different policies implemented in response to the recent Financial Crisis
No full textRescue cases involving guarantees (contrasted with restructuring cases) during the recent Financial Crisis, have illustrated the prominent position which the goal of promoting financial stability has assumed over that of the prevention or limitation of possible distortions of competition which may arise when granting State aid. The recent Financial Crisis has also illustrated how the traditional role of central banks has been extended to incorporate more innovative roles. The reduction of interest rates by central banks to all time lows – along with other unprecedented actions which have been undertaken by central banks, as evidenced by the recent Financial Crisis, have been regarded as „extensions of traditional methods of operation which have resulted in a new territory in which tools have been implemented in very new ways.“ As well as providing an analysis of how the traditional role of central banks has evolved through the duration of the Financial Crisis, this paper attempts to highlight how far central banks and governments should intervene and how far distortions of competition should be permitted during periods of financial crises.competition; central banks; recapitalisation; stability; regulation; financial crises; fundamentally sound financial institutions; macro prudential; Basel III; systemic risk; supervision; liquidity; state aid; monetary policy
Patologia y terapeutica del Aparato lenticular del Ojo. Translated from the German by D Carlos Finlay
No full textPATOLOGIA Y TERAPEUTICA DEL APARATO LENTICULAR DEL OJO. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY D CARLOS FINLAY
Franciscus Cornelius Donders Library (-)
Patologia y terapeutica del Aparato lenticular del Ojo. Translated from the German by D Carlos Finlay (-
Effect of Penetrator configuration and size on the dynamic behavior of composite material under high strain rate loading
No full textABSTRACTEFFECT OF PENETRATOR CONFIGURATION AND SIZE ON THE DYNAMIC BEHAVIOR OF COMPOSITE MATERIAL UNDER HIGH STRAIN RATE LOADINGOlorunfemi B. Ojo (M.SC)University of Pittsburgh, 2003Dynamic test was carried out on a plain weave carbon epoxy composites plate of different thickness (12, 16 and 24 layers) to determine the penetration and perforation threshold energies for each specimen using penetrators of different sizes and geometries namely: Protruding spherical, protruding hemispherical and conical hemispherical penetrators. The specimen damage thresholds considered in this thesis are: Below ballistic limit (BBL), at ballistic limit (BL) and above ballistic limit (ABL). Ballistic limit here is defined as the threshold energy or minimum energy that has to be exceeded before perforation takes place on the specimenHigh strain rate loading on the specimen was achieved by a newly installed Penetrating Split Hopkinson bar (P-SPHB) in the Material Behavior Lab at the University of Pittsburgh. A model 220 CCD video camera and 330 high speed imaging camera was used to measure the speed of crack propagation in the specimens. Cracks were found to propagate faster in the thinner specimen in all the damage thresholds. The ballistic limit for each specimen was experimentally determined. The result shows that sample thickness, penetrator size and geometries play a significant role in characterizing specimen damage. Energy absorption rate was found to increase as the penetrator size increased.The nature of specimen damage was found to depend on the penetrator geometry. The result also shows that strain depends on both striker impact energy and the target thickness. By varying the penetrator size and geometries it was discovered that both variables play a significant role in energy absorption rate of the specime
Network Performance Evaluation of a LoRa-based IoT System for Crop Protection against Ungulates
No full textInternet of Things (IoT) applications are deeply revolutionizing our lives, due to the continuous, outstanding development of innovative platforms including, for instance, accurate sensors, cloud solutions, and involving relevant advancements in standards and protocols. One of the recent trends of IoT applications is smart agriculture, which is evolving to solve several relevant problems from producers. In this paper, we present an IoT solution for precision agriculture aimed at repelling ungulates and preventing damages to crop fields. Moreover, this paper provides an in-depth technical description of a complete architecture we designed and deployed for this application, that consists of the low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) and the backend system. The deployment also explores the performance of LoRa network in terms of its reliability in a rural area under different scenarios, i.e., in an open, dense and very dense vegetation environments. Experimental results show that vegetations have high impact on LoRa performance. Finally, this paper discusses how the proposed technology is the right one for smart agriculture in relation to crop protection
Experimental evaluation of a Lora wildlife monitoring network in a forest vegetation area
No full textSmart agriculture and wildlife monitoring are one of the recent trends of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, which are evolving in providing sustainable solutions from producers. This article details the design, development and assessment of a wildlife monitoring application for IoT animal repelling devices that is able to cover large areas, thanks to the low power wide area networks (LPWAN), which bridge the gap between cellular technologies and short range wireless technologies. LoRa, the global de-facto LPWAN, continues to attract attention given its open specification and ready availability of off-the-shelf hardware, with claims of several kilometers of range in harsh challenging environments. At first, this article presents a survey of the LPWAN for smart agriculture applications. We proceed to evaluate the performance of LoRa transmission technology operating in the 433 MHz and 868 MHz bands, aimed at wildlife monitoring in a forest vegetation area. To characterize the communication link, we mainly use the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and packet delivery ratio (PDR). Findings from this study show that achievable performance can greatly vary between the 433 MHz and 868 MHz bands, and prompt caution is required when taking numbers at face value, as this can have implications for IoT applications. In addition, our results show that the link reaches up to 860 m in the highly dense forest vegetation environment, while in the not so dense forest vegetation environment, it reaches up to 2050 m
Design, Development and Evaluation of an Intelligent Animal Repelling System for Crop Protection Based on Embedded Edge-AI
No full textIn recent years, edge computing has become an essential technology for real-time application development by moving processing and storage capabilities close to end devices, thereby reducing latency, improving response time and ensuring secure data exchange. In this work, we focus on a Smart Agriculture application that aims to protect crops from ungulate attacks, and therefore to significantly reduce production losses, through the creation of virtual fences that take advantage of computer vision and ultrasound emission. Starting with an innovative device capable of generating ultrasound to drive away ungulates and thus protect crops from their attack, this work provides a comprehensive description of the design, development and assessment of an intelligent animal repulsion system that allows to detect and recognize the ungulates as well as generate ultrasonic signals tailored to each species of the ungulate. Taking into account the constraints coming from the rural environment in terms of energy supply and network connectivity, the proposed system is based on IoT platforms that provide a satisfactory compromise between performance, cost and energy consumption. More specifically, in this work, we deployed and evaluated various edge computing devices (Raspberry Pi, with or without a neural compute stick, and NVIDIA Jetson Nano) running real-time object detector (YOLO and Tiny-YOLO) with custom-trained models to identify the most suitable animal recognition HW/SW platform to be integrated with the ultrasound generator. Experimental results show the feasibility of the intelligent animal repelling system through the deployment of the animal detectors on power efficient edge computing devices without compromising the mean average precision and also satisfying real-time requirements. In addition, for each HW/SW platform, the experimental study provides a cost/performance analysis, as well as measurements of the average and peak CPU temperature. Best practices are also discussed and lastly, this article discusses how the combined technology used can help farmers and agronomists in their decision making and management process
STATE INTERVENTIONISM IN THE LATE CLASSIC MAYA PALENQUE POLITY: HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY ARCHAEOLOGY AT EL LACANDON
No full textArchaeological materials from seven excavated households (three commoner, three elite and a super-elite) from El Lacandón, a rural settlement of the Ancient Maya Palenque polity in Chiapas, Mexico; are analyzed to examine how households and communities were articulated and later affected by incorporation into larger sociopolitical entities. The study spans El Lacandón’s foundation in the Late Preclassic period (300 B.C. -A.D. 150), its abandonment as part of its assimilation into the Palenque polity at the beginning of the Classic period (ca. A.D. 150), and its re-foundation as a 2nd level community in the political hierarchy of the Palenque polity at the end of the Late Classic (A.D. 750-850). Economic analyses consider patterns of production and consumption. Obsidian blade manufacturing was organized as a household-level production in both periods, and it was not attached to elite interests during the Late Preclassic, with households of both statuses engaged in paper production, woodworking and paper/cloth imprintings. The pattern changes during the Late Classic, with manufacturing activities restricted to elite households. In terms of consumption, obsidian was available in similar quantities to all households during the Late Preclassic, and became more abundant in elite households during the Late Classic. Ideological patterns of the Late Classic period show that the super-elite household was clearly linked to Palenque’s great tradition expressed in burial practices, according to body position and head orientation. Local elite burials practices were more diverse, which was possibly related to a local little tradition. El Lacandón’s abandonment at the end of the Late Preclassic coincides with the growth of Palenque as a political capital, a pattern frequently observed in cases where rural population moved to growing political capitals. Sociopolitical patterns during the Late Classic were examined by a comparison of civic precinct planning and the differential distribution of elite and commoner households in the districts of the Palenque polity. The analysis concluded that provincial elites exercised less power than the elite of the capital, but were able to negotiate a local identity expressed in Palenque-related elements and also elements of other polities
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Edge-AI Platform for Realtime Wildlife Repelling
No full textIn this paper, we present the architecture of a Smart Industry inspired platform designed for Agriculture 4.0 applications and, specifically, to optimize an ecosystem of SW and HW components for animal repelling. The platform implementation aims to obtain reliability and energy efficiency in a system aimed to detect, recognize, identify, and repel wildlife by generating specific ultrasound signals. The wireless sensor network is composed of OpenMote hardware devices coordinated on a mesh network based on the 6LoWPAN protocol, and connected to an FPGA-based board. The system, activated when an animal is detected, elaborates the data received from a video camera connected to FPGA-based hardware devices and then activates different ultrasonic jammers belonging to the OpenMotes network devices. This way, in real-time wildlife will be progressively moved away from the field to be preserved by the activation of specific ultrasonic generators. To monitor the daily behavior of the wildlife, the ecosystem is expanded using a time series database running on a Cloud platform
- …
