Situation assessment through multi-modal sensing of dynamic environments to support cognitive robot control

Awareness of emerging situations in a dynamic operational environment of a robotic assistive device is an essential capability of such a cognitive system, based on its effective and efficient assessment of the prevailing situation. This allows the system to interact with the environment in a sensible (semi)autonomous / pro-active manner without the need for frequent interventions from a supervisor. In this paper, we report a novel generic Situation Assessment Architecture for robotic systems directly assisting humans as developed in the CORBYS project. This paper presents the overall architecture for situation assessment and its application in proof-of-concept Demonstrators as developed and validated within the CORBYS project. These include a robotic human follower and a mobile gait rehabilitation robotic system. We present an overview of the structure and functionality of the Situation Assessment Architecture for robotic systems with results and observations as collected from initial validation on the two CORBYS Demonstrators.

[C7H10N][In3Se5]: a layered selenide with two indium coordination environments

A new layered indium selenide, [C7H10N][In3Se5], was prepared under solvothermal conditions using 3,5-dimethylpyridine as a structure-directing agent. The crystal structure contains anionic layers of stoichiometry [In3Se5]− in which indium atoms with octahedral and tetrahedral coordination coexist. This material represents the first occurrence of octahedrally coordinated indium in a solvothermally-prepared indium selenide.

Atmospheric rivers do not explain UK summer extreme rainfall

Extreme rainfall events continue to be one of the largest natural hazards in the UK. In winter, heavy precipitation and floods have been linked with intense moisture transport events associated with atmospheric rivers (ARs), yet no large-scale atmospheric precursors have been linked to summer flooding in the UK. This study investigates the link between ARs and extreme rainfall from two perspectives: 1) Given an extreme rainfall event, is there an associated AR? 2) Given an AR, is there an associated extreme rainfall event? We identify extreme rainfall events using the UK Met Office daily rain-gauge dataset and link these to ARs using two different horizontal resolution atmospheric datasets (ERA-Interim and 20th Century Re-analysis). The results show that less than 35% of winter ARs and less than 15% of summer ARs are associated with an extreme rainfall event. Consistent with previous studies, at least 50% of extreme winter rainfall events are associated with an AR. However, less than 20% of the identified summer extreme rainfall events are associated with an AR. The dependence of the water vapor transport intensity threshold used to define an AR on the years included in the study, and on the length of the season, is also examined. Including a longer period (1900-2012) compared to previous studies (1979-2005) reduces the water vapor transport intensity threshold used to define an AR.

Attribution of climate extreme events

There is a tremendous desire to attribute causes to weather and climate events that is often challenging from a physical standpoint. Headlines attributing an event solely to either human-induced climate change or natural variability can be misleading when both are invariably in play. The conventional attribution framework struggles with dynamically driven extremes because of the small signal-to-noise ratios and often uncertain nature of the forced changes. Here, we suggest that a different framing is desirable, which asks why such extremes unfold the way they do. Specifically, we suggest that it is more useful to regard the extreme circulation regime or weather event as being largely unaffected by climate change, and question whether known changes in the climate system's thermodynamic state affected the impact of the particular event. Some examples briefly illustrated include 'snowmaggedon' in February 2010, superstorm Sandy in October 2012 and supertyphoon Haiyan in November 2013, and, in more detail, the Boulder floods of September 2013, all of which were influenced by high sea surface temperatures that had a discernible human component.

LEGO® bricks as building blocks for centimeter-scale biological environments

LEGO bricks are commercially available interlocking pieces of plastic that are conventionally used as toys. We describe their use to build engineered environments for cm-scale biological systems, in particular plant roots. Specifically, we take advantage of the unique modularity of these building blocks to create inexpensive, transparent, reconfigurable, and highly scalable environments for plant growth in which structural obstacles and chemical gradients can be precisely engineered to mimic soil.

KPIs and their properties defined with the EXTREME method

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the main instruments of Business Performance Management. KPIs are the measures that are translated to both the strategy and the business process. These measures are often designed for an industry sector with the assumptions about business processes in organizations. However, the assumptions can be too incomplete to guarantee the required properties of KPIs. This raises the need to validate the properties of KPIs prior to their application to performance measurement. This paper applies the method called EXecutable Requirements Engineering Management and Evolution (EXTREME) for validation of the KPI definitions. EXTREME semantically relates the goal modeling, conceptual modeling and protocol modeling techniques into one methodology. The synchronous composition built into protocol modeling enables raceability of goals in protocol models and constructive definitions of a KPI. The application of the method clarifies the meaning of KPI properties and procedures of their assessment and validation.

Simultaneous mobile sink allocation in home environments with applications in mobile consumer robotics

This paper presents a novel mobile sink area allocation scheme for consumer based mobile robotic devices with a proven application to robotic vacuum cleaners. In the home or office environment, rooms are physically separated by walls and an automated robotic cleaner cannot make a decision about which room to move to and perform the cleaning task. Likewise, state of the art cleaning robots do not move to other rooms without direct human interference. In a smart home monitoring system, sensor nodes may be deployed to monitor each separate room. In this work, a quad tree based data gathering scheme is proposed whereby the mobile sink physically moves through every room and logically links all separated sub-networks together. The proposed scheme sequentially collects data from the monitoring environment and transmits the information back to a base station. According to the sensor nodes information, the base station can command a cleaning robot to move to a specific location in the home environment. The quad tree based data gathering scheme minimizes the data gathering tour length and time through the efficient allocation of data gathering areas. A calculated shortest path data gathering tour can efficiently be allocated to the robotic cleaner to complete the cleaning task within a minimum time period. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively allocate and control the cleaning area to the robot vacuum cleaner without any direct interference from the consumer. The performance of the proposed scheme is then validated with a set of practical sequential data gathering tours in a typical office/home environment.

Breaching the social contract: crises of democratic representation and patterns of extreme right party support

Why has the extreme right Greek Golden Dawn, a party with clear links to fascism experienced a rise defying all theories that claim that such a party is unlikely to win in post-WWII Europe? And, if we accept that economic crisis is an explanation for this, why has such a phenomenon not occurred in other countries that have similar conducive conditions, such as Portugal and Spain? This article addresses this puzzle by (a) carrying out a controlled comparison of Greece, Portugal and Spain and (b) showing that the rise of the extreme right is not a question of intensity of economic crisis. Rather it is the nature of the crisis, i.e. economic versus overall crisis of democratic representation that facilitates the rise of the extreme right. We argue that extreme right parties are more likely to experience an increase in their support when economic crisis culminates into an overall crisis of democratic representation. Economic crisis is likely to become a political crisis when severe issues of governability impact upon the ability of the state to fulfil its social contract obligations. This breach of the social contract is accompanied by declining levels of trust in state institutions, resulting in party system collapse.

Leaf trapping and retention of particles by holm oak and other common tree species in Mediterranean urban environments

Holm oak (Quercus ilex), a widespread urban street tree in the Mediterranean region, is widely used as biomonitor of persistent atmospheric pollutants, especially particulate-bound metals. By using lab- and field-based experimental approaches, we compared the leaf-level capacity for particles’ capture and retention between Q. ilex and other common Mediterranean urban trees: Quercus cerris, Platanus × hispanica, Tilia cordata and Olea europaea. All applied methods were effective in quantifying particulate capture and retention, although not univocal in ranking species performances. Distinctive morphological features of leaves led to differences in species’ ability to trap and retain particles of different size classes and to accumulate metals after exposure to traffic in an urban street. Overall, P. × hispanica and T. cordata showed the largest capture potential per unit leaf area for most model particles (Na+ and powder particles), and street-level Cu and Pb, while Q. ilex acted intermediately. After wash-off experiments, P. × hispanica leaves had the greatest retention capacity among the tested species and O. europaea the lowest. We concluded that the Platanus planting could be considered in Mediterranean urban environments due to its efficiency in accumulating and retaining airborne particulates; however, with atmospheric pollution being typically higher in winter, the evergreen Q. ilex represents a better year-round choice to mitigate the impact of airborne particulate pollutants.

Synergy of extreme drought and shrub invasion reduce ecosystem functioning and resilience in water-limited climates

Extreme drought events and plant invasions are major drivers of global change that can critically affect ecosystem functioning and alter ecosystem-atmosphere exchange. Invaders are expanding worldwide and extreme drought events are projected to increase in frequency and intensity. However, very little is known on how these drivers may interact to affect the functioning and resilience of ecosystems to extreme events. Using a manipulative shrub removal experiment and the co-occurrence of an extreme drought event (2011/2012) in a Mediterranean woodland, we show that native shrub invasion and extreme drought synergistically reduced ecosystem transpiration and the resilience of key-stone oak tree species. Ecosystem transpiration was dominated by the water use of the invasive shrub Cistus ladanifer, which further increased after the extreme drought event. Meanwhile, the transpiration of key-stone tree species decreased, indicating a competitive advantage in favour of the invader. Our results suggest that in Mediterranean-type climates the invasion of water spending species and projected recurrent extreme drought events may synergistically cause critical drought tolerance thresholds of key-stone tree species to be surpassed, corroborating observed higher tree mortality in the invaded ecosystems. Ultimately, this may shift seasonally water limited ecosystems into less desirable alternative states dominated by water spending invasive shrubs.

Diagnosing links between atmospheric moisture and extreme daily precipitation over the UK

Atmospheric moisture characteristics associated with the heaviest 1% of daily rainfall events affecting regions of the British Isles are analysed over the period 1997–2008. A blended satellite/rain-gauge data set (GPCP-1DD) and regionally averaged daily rain-gauge observations (HadUKP) are combined with the ERA Interim reanalysis. These are compared with simulations from the HadGEM2-A climate model which applied observed sea surface temperature and realistic radiative forcings. Median extreme daily rainfall across the identified events and locations is larger for GPCP (32 mm day−1) than HadUKP and the simulations (∼25 mm day−1). The heaviest observed and simulated daily rainfall events are associated with increased specific humidity and horizontal transport of moisture (median 850 hPa specific humidity of ∼6 g kg−1 and vapour transport of ∼150 g kg−1 m s−1 for both observed and simulated events). Extreme daily rainfall events are less common during spring and summer across much of the British Isles, but in the south east region, they contribute up to 60% of the total number of distinct extreme daily rainfall events during these months. Compared to winter events, the summer events over south east Britain are associated with a greater magnitude and more southerly location of moisture maxima and less spatially extensive regions of enhanced moisture transport. This contrasting dependence of extreme daily rainfall on moisture characteristics implies a range of driving mechanisms that depend upon location and season. Higher spatial and temporal resolution data are required to explore these processes further, which is vital in assessing future projected changes in rainfall and associated flooding.

Acarología forense [Forensic acarology]

Mites are a highly diversified group of chelicerates (arthropods) adapted to a broad spectrum of habitats and diets, presenting extreme specificity to habitats. They are considered to be important indicators of environmental conditions including those modified by human beings. Therefore, they can inform about the environment where a corpse has been exposed to, about the route of specific merchandises, as well as about other applied aspects of forensic entomology. It is not rare the presence of species adapted to cadaveric environments. Jean Pierre Mégnin, forensic veterinarian considered pioneer in the development of forensic entomology, conscious about the importance of mites as forensic indicators, was the first including mites in the decomposition process. For Mégnin, wave six was formed by mites only. Due to the increasing interest of forensic experts in including these organisms in their analysis of trace evidence, as mites are one of the most ubiquitous organisms, we have developed standards for the sampling, conservation and custody of mite evidence of forensic interest.