Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain

The intelligent controlling mechanism of a typical mobile robot is usually a computer system. Some recent research is ongoing in which biological neurons are being cultured and trained to act as the brain of an interactive real world robot�thereby either completely replacing, or operating in a cooperative fashion with, a computer system. Studying such hybrid systems can provide distinct insights into the operation of biological neural structures, and therefore, such research has immediate medical implications as well as enormous potential in robotics. The main aim of the research is to assess the computational and learning capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks. A hybrid system incorporating closed-loop control of a mobile robot by a dissociated culture of neurons has been created. The system is flexible and allows for closed-loop operation, either with hardware robot or its software simulation. The paper provides an overview of the problem area, gives an idea of the breadth of present ongoing research, establises a new system architecture and, as an example, reports on the results of conducted experiments with real-life robots.

Clinical and subclinical mastitis in smallholder dairy farms in Tanzania: Risk, intervention and knowledge transfer

In a cross-sectional study of 400 randomly selected smallholder dairy farms in the Tanga and Iringa regions of Tanzania, 14.2% (95% confidence interval (CI) = 11.6-17.3) of cows had developed clinical mastitis during the previous year. The point prevalence of subclinical mastitis, defined as a quarter positive by the California Mastitis Test (CMT) or by bacteriological culture, was 46.2% (95% Cl = 43.6-48.8) and 24.3% (95% Cl = 22.2-26.6), respectively. In a longitudinal disease study in Iringa, the incidence of clinical mastitis was 31.7 cases per 100 cow-years. A randomised intervention trial indicated that intramammary antibiotics significantly reduced the proportion of bacteriologically positive quarters in the short-term (14 days post-infusion) but teat dipping had no detectable effect on bacteriological infection and CMT positive quarters. Other risk and protective factors were identified from both the cross-sectional and longitudinal included animals with Boran breeding (odds ratio (OR) = 3,40, 95% CI = 1.00-11.57, P < 0.05 for clinical mastitis, and OR = 3.51, 95% CI = 1.299.55, P < 0.01 for a CMT positive quarter), while the practice of residual calf suckling was protective for a bacteriologically positive quarter (OR = 0.63, 95% Cl = 0.48-0.81, P <= 0.001) and for a CMT positive quarter (OR = 0.69, 95% Cl = 0.63-0.75, P < 0.001). A mastitis training course for farmers and extension officers was held, and the knowledge gained and use of different methods of dissemination were assessed over time. In a subsequent randomised controlled trial, there were strong associations between knowledge gained and both the individual question asked and the combination of dissemination methods (village meeting, video and handout) used. This study demonstrated that both clinical and subclinical mastitis is common in smallholder dairying in Tanzania, and that some of the risk and protective factors for mastitis can be addressed by practical management of dairy cows following effective knowledge transfer. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The children that time forgot: Reframing housing standards to incorporate children's needs

This paper presents the findings from a recent study funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation examining the housing and neighbourhood needs of 44 visually impaired children. Our research found that disabled people’s needs have been too narrowly based on ‘accessibility’ criteria, which do not take into account the health and safety issues so important for children. Indeed, the home environment is the main site of accidental death or injury for young children under 4 years, and children from low income families are particularly susceptible to burns, scalds, falls, swallowing foreign objects or poisonous substances within it (CRDU 1994). As disabled children are statistically more likely to be in low income families, this places them at high risk. If ‘accessibility’ is to be reconceived as design for usability throughout the lifecourse, this challenges us to move beyond the pragmatic but limited application of design prescriptions for disabled people as a separate and adult group, and to re-think all of the dimensions of the housing quality framework in the light of this expanded approach.

Behaviour-based authentication in the built enviromnent

This paper proposes a novel method of authentication of users in secure buildings. The main objective is to investigate whether user actions in the built environment can produce consistent behavioural signatures upon which a building intrusion detection system could be based. In the process three behavioural expressions were discovered: time-invariant, co-dependent and idiosyncratic.

A fuzzy multi-criteria decision approach for enhanced auto-tracking of seismic events

The main activity carried out by the geophysicist when interpreting seismic data, in terms of both importance and time spent is tracking (or picking) seismic events. in practice, this activity turns out to be rather challenging, particularly when the targeted event is interrupted by discontinuities such as geological faults or exhibits lateral changes in seismic character. In recent years, several automated schemes, known as auto-trackers, have been developed to assist the interpreter in this tedious and time-consuming task. The automatic tracking tool available in modem interpretation software packages often employs artificial neural networks (ANN's) to identify seismic picks belonging to target events through a pattern recognition process. The ability of ANNs to track horizons across discontinuities largely depends on how reliably data patterns characterise these horizons. While seismic attributes are commonly used to characterise amplitude peaks forming a seismic horizon, some researchers in the field claim that inherent seismic information is lost in the attribute extraction process and advocate instead the use of raw data (amplitude samples). This paper investigates the performance of ANNs using either characterisation methods, and demonstrates how the complementarity of both seismic attributes and raw data can be exploited in conjunction with other geological information in a fuzzy inference system (FIS) to achieve an enhanced auto-tracking performance.