Road wanderers in Brazil: a study on modern psychosocial human mobility

Human mobility patterns are quite diverse nowadays and a very singular, extreme pattern is seen in the Brazilian scene: road wandering. Road wanderers are individuals who leave their home, family, work and other territories of a settled life and throw themselves into a life of solitary wandering along Brazilian highways. This study aimed to describe the lifestyle of road wanderers, investigate the reasons that led them choose this way of living and understand it against a background of modern human mobility patterns. A total of 63 interviews were conducted with individuals wandering on road shoulders. We found road wandering is associated with the following determinants: poverty; unemployment; marital conflicts; emotional suffering following the loss of loved ones; desires for adventure and freedom; and cultural symbols related to journey, migration, exodus and other modes of displacement. Despite its particularities, road wandering can be understood as a way of human mobility in the modern world.

Influence of mobility models in precision spray aided by wireless sensor networks

Precision Spray is a technique to increase performance of Precision Agriculture. This spray technique may be aided by a Wireless Sensor Network, however, for such approach, the communication between the agricultural input applicator vehicle and network is critical due to its proper functioning. Thus, this work analyzes how the number of nodes in a wireless sensor network, its type of distribution and different areas of scenario affects the performance of communication. We performed simulations to observe system's behavior changing to find the most fitted non-controlled mobility model to the system.