Anti-leishmanial effects of purified compounds from aerial parts of Baccharis uncinella C. DC. (Asteraceae)

Species of Baccharis exhibit antibiotic, antiseptic, wound-healing, and anti-protozoal properties, and have been used in the traditional medicine of South America for the treatment of several diseases. In the present work, the fractionation of EtOH extract from aerial parts of Baccharis uncinella indicated that the isolated compounds caffeic acid and pectolinaringenin showed inhibitory activity against Leishmania (L.) amazonensis and Leishmania (V.) braziliensis promastigotes, respectively. Moreover, amastigote forms of both species were highly sensible to the fraction composed by oleanolic + ursolic acids and pectolinaringenin. Caffeic acid also inhibited amastigote forms of L. (L.) amazonensis, but this effect was weak in L. (V.) braziliensis amastigotes. The treatment of infected macrophages with these compounds did not alter the levels of nitrates, indicating a direct effect of the compounds on amastigote stages. The results presented herein suggest that the active components from B. uncinella can be important to the design of new drugs against American tegumentar leishmaniases.

Evaluation of anti-inflammatory activity of derivatives from aerial parts of Baccharis uncinella

Context: Species of Baccharis exhibit antibiotic, antiseptic, and wound-healing properties, and have been used in the traditional medicine of South America for the treatment of inflammation, headaches, diabetes, and hepatobiliary disorders.Objective: To investigate the anti-inflammatory activity of organic phases from EtOH extract of the aerial parts of Baccharis uncinella DC (Asteraceae).Materials and methods: The crude EtOH extract from the aerial parts of B. uncinella was subjected to partition procedures and the corresponding CH(2)Cl(2) and EtOAc phases were subjected to several chromatographic separation procedures. Thus, these phases and their purified compounds were assayed for evaluation of anti-inflammatory activity.Results: The CH(2)Cl(2) phase from EtOH extract from B. uncinella contained two triterpenoids (oleanolic and ursolic acids) and one flavonoid (pectolinaringenin), whereas the respective EtOAc phase showed to be composed mainly by two phenylpropanoid derivatives (caffeic and ferulic acids). The CH(2)Cl(2) and EtOAc phases as well as their isolated compounds exhibited anti-inflammatory effects against inflammatory reactions induced by phospholipase A2 (from Crotalus durissus terrificus venom) and by carrageenan.Discussion and conclusion: The results suggested that the components obtained from partition phases of EtOH extract of B. uncinella could represent lead molecules for the development of anti-inflammatory agents. Additionally, the results confirmed the use of Baccharis genus in the traditional medicine of South America for the treatment of inflammation and other heath disorders. To date, the present work describes for the first time the anti-inflammatory effects of compounds isolated from B. uncinella.

Mission and Scenario Planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Path Planning and Collision Avoidance Systems)

As unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) are being widely utilized in military and civil applications, concerns are growing about mission safety and how to integrate dierent phases of mission design. One important barrier to a coste ective and timely safety certication process for UAVs is the lack of a systematic approach for bridging the gap between understanding high-level commander/pilot intent and implementation of intent through low-level UAV behaviors. In this thesis we demonstrate an entire systems design process for a representative UAV mission, beginning from an operational concept and requirements and ending with a simulation framework for segments of the mission design, such as path planning and decision making in collision avoidance. In this thesis, we divided this complex system into sub-systems; path planning, collision detection and collision avoidance. We then developed software modules for each sub-system

X-ray fluorescence spectroscopic determination of heavy metals and trace elements in aerial parts of Origanum sipyleum L from Turkey

Purpose: To determine the heavy metal and trace element composition of the powdered aerial parts of Origanum sipyleum L. and its water extract. Methods: The heavy metal and trace elements content of the powdered plant material and 2 % aqueous extract were evaluated by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy with silicon drift detector SDD at a resolution of 145 eV and 10,000 pulses. The process conditions were 0.1 g sample weight, process time of 300 s at a voltage of 25 kV and 50 kV, and at a current of 0.5 and 1.0 mA under helium atmosphere. Results: The major elements, K, Ca and Na, known as macronutrients, constituted 11990, 10490 and 970 ppm of the powdered drug and 8910, 2991 and 810 ppm of the water extract, respectively. Among other constituents, arsenic, lead and uranium levels were < 1, 2.1 and < 3 ppm, respectively, in the powdered material while in the aqueous extract, the levels were < 1, < 2 and 200 ppm, respectively. Conclusion: O. sipyleum is a potential source of macro- and micronutrients from which useful food additives and health supplements can be derived.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle: tecnologie e prospettive future

Partendo dalla definizione di UAV e UAS, arrivando a quella di drone, nella tesi saranno definiti i termini precedenti, ossia un sistema aereo senza pilota a bordo, la nascita del termine drone e le tendenze attuali. Dopo una precisa classificazione nelle quattro categorie principali (droni per hobbisti, commerciali e militari di me- dia grandezza, militari specifici di grandi dimensioni e stealth da combattimento) saranno descritti gli ambiti di utilizzo: da un lato quello militare e della sicurezza, dall’altro quello civile e scientifico. I capitoli centrali della tesi saranno il cuore dell’opera: l’architettura dell’UAV sarà descritta analizzando la totalità delle sue componenti, sia hardware che software. Verranno, quindi, analizzati i problemi relativi alla sicurezza, focalizzandosi sull’hacking di un UAV, illustrandone le varie tecniche e contromisure (tra cui anche come nascondersi da un drone). Il lavoro della tesi prosegue nei capitoli successivi con un’attenta trattazione della normativa vigente e dell’etica dei droni (nonché del diritto ad uccidere con tali sistemi). Il capitolo relativo alla tecnologia stealth sarà importante per capire le modalità di occultamento, le tendenze attuali e i possibili sviluppi futuri degli UAV militari da combattimento. Il capitolo finale sugli sviluppi futuri esporrà le migliorie tecnologiche e gli obiettivi degli UAV negli anni a venire, insieme ad eventuali utilizzi sia militari che civili. La ricerca sarà orientata verso sistemi miniaturizzati, multiple UAV e swarming.

Numeric model to estimate pesticide deposition and losses from aerial spraying.

Pesticides applications have been described by many researches as a very inefficient process. In some cases, there are reports that only 0.02% of the applied products are used for the effective control of the problem. The main factor that influences pesticides applications is the droplet size formed on spraying nozzles. Many parameters affects the dynamic of the droplets, like wind, temperature, relative humidity, and others. Small droplets are biologically more active, but they are affected by evaporation and drift. On the other hand, the great droplets do not promote a good distribution of the product on the target. In this sense, associated with the risk of non target areas contamination and with the high costs involved in applications, the knowledge of the droplet size is of fundamental importance in the application technology. When sophisticated technology for droplets analysis is unavailable, is common the use of artificial targets like water-sensitive paper to sample droplets. On field sampling, water-sensitive papers are placed on the trials where product will be applied. When droplets impinging on it, the yellow surface of this paper will be stained dark blue, making easy their recognition. Collected droplets on this papers have different kinds of sizes. In this sense, the determination of the droplet size distribution gives a mass distribution of the material and so, the efficience of the application of the product. The stains produced by droplets shows a spread factor proportional to their respectives initial sizes. One of methodologies to analyse the droplets is a counting and measure of the droplets made in microscope. The Porton N-G12 graticule, that shows equaly spaces class intervals on geometric progression of square 2, are coulpled to the lens of the microscope. The droplet size parameters frequently used are the Volumetric Median Diameter (VMD) and the Numeric Median Diameter. On VMD value, a representative droplets sample is divided in two equal parts of volume, in such away one part contains droplets of sizes smaller than VMD and the other part contains droplets of sizes greater that VMD. The same process is done to obtaining the NMD, which divide the sample in two equal parts in relation to the droplets size. The ratio between VMD and NMD allows the droplets uniformity evaluation. After that, the graphics of accumulated probability of the volume and size droplets are plotted on log scale paper (accumulated probability versus median diameter of each size class). The graphics provides the NMD on the x-axes point corresponding to the value of 50% founded on the y-axes. All this process is very slow and subjected to operator error. So, in order to decrease the difficulty envolved with droplets measuring it was developed a numeric model, implemented on easy and accessfull computational language, which allows approximate VMD and NMD values, with good precision. The inputs to this model are the frequences of the droplets sizes colected on the water-sensitive paper, observed on the Porton N-G12 graticule fitted on microscope. With these data, the accumulated distribution of the droplet medium volumes and sizes are evaluated. The graphics obtained by plotting this distributions allow to obtain the VMD and NMD using linear interpolation, seen that on the middle of the distributions the shape of the curves are linear. These values are essential to evaluate the uniformity of droplets and to estimate the volume deposited on the observed paper by the density (droplets/cm2). This methodology to estimate the droplets volume was developed by 11.0.94.224 Project of the CNPMA/EMBRAPA. Observed data of herbicides aerial spraying samples, realized by Project on Pelotas/RS county, were used to compare values obtained manual graphic method and with those obtained by model has shown, with great precision, the values of VMD and NMD on each sampled collector, allowing to estimate a quantities of deposited product and, by consequence, the quantities losses by drifty. The graphics of variability of VMD and NMD showed that the quantity of droplets that reachs the collectors had a short dispersion, while the deposited volume shows a great interval of variation, probably because the strong action of air turbulence on the droplets distribution, enfasizing the necessity of a deeper study to verify this influences on drift.

Evaluation of separation management algorithms in Class G airspace

Use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in support of government applications has already seen significant growth and the potential for use of UAVs in commercial applications is expected to rapidly expand in the near future. However, the issue remains on how such automated or operator-controlled aircraft can be safely integrated into current airspace. If the goal of integration is to be realized, issues regarding safe separation in densely populated airspace must be investigated. This paper investigates automated separation management concepts in uncontrolled airspace that may help prepare for an expected growth of UAVs in Class G airspace. Not only are such investigations helpful for the UAV integration issue, the automated separation management concepts investigated by the authors can also be useful for the development of new or improved Air Traffic Control services in remote regions without any existing infrastructure. The paper will also provide an overview of the Smart Skies program and discuss the corresponding Smart Skies research and development effort to evaluate aircraft separation management algorithms using simulations involving realworld data communication channels, and verified against actual flight trials. This paper presents results from a unique flight test concept that uses real-time flight test data from Australia over existing commercial communication channels to a control center in Seattle for real-time separation management of actual and simulated aircraft. The paper also assesses the performance of an automated aircraft separation manager.

Automating human thought processes for a UAV forced landing

This paper describes the current status of a program to develop an automated forced landing system for a fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This automated system seeks to emulate human pilot thought processes when planning for and conducting an engine-off emergency landing. Firstly, a path planning algorithm that extends Dubins curves to 3D space is presented. This planning element is then combined with a nonlinear guidance and control logic, and simulated test results demonstrate the robustness of this approach to strong winds during a glided descent. The average path deviation errors incurred are comparable to or even better than that of manned, powered aircraft. Secondly, a study into suitable multi-criteria decision making approaches and the problems that confront the decision-maker is presented. From this study, it is believed that decision processes that utilize human expert knowledge and fuzzy logic reasoning are most suited to the problem at hand, and further investigations will be conducted to identify the particular technique/s to be implemented in simulations and field tests. The automated UAV forced landing approach presented in this paper is promising, and will allow the progression of this technology from the development and simulation stages through to a prototype system

Towards automatic power line detection for a UAV surveillance system using pulse coupled neural filter and an improved Hough transform

Spatial information captured from optical remote sensors on board unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has great potential in automatic surveillance of electrical infrastructure. For an automatic vision-based power line inspection system, detecting power lines from a cluttered background is one of the most important and challenging tasks. In this paper, a novel method is proposed, specifically for power line detection from aerial images. A pulse coupled neural filter is developed to remove background noise and generate an edge map prior to the Hough transform being employed to detect straight lines. An improved Hough transform is used by performing knowledge-based line clustering in Hough space to refine the detection results. The experiment on real image data captured from a UAV platform demonstrates that the proposed approach is effective for automatic power line detection.

Towards automatic tree crown detection and delineation in spectral feature space using PCNN and morphological reconstruction

The application of object-based approaches to the problem of extracting vegetation information from images requires accurate delineation of individual tree crowns. This paper presents an automated method for individual tree crown detection and delineation by applying a simplified PCNN model in spectral feature space followed by post-processing using morphological reconstruction. The algorithm was tested on high resolution multi-spectral aerial images and the results are compared with two existing image segmentation algorithms. The results demonstrate that our algorithm outperforms the other two solutions with the average accuracy of 81.8%.

Evolutionary optimisation methods with uncertainty for modern multidisciplinary design in aeronautical engineering

One of the new challenges in aeronautics is combining and accounting for multiple disciplines while considering uncertainties or variability in the design parameters or operating conditions. This paper describes a methodology for robust multidisciplinary design optimisation when there is uncertainty in the operating conditions. The methodology, which is based on canonical evolution algorithms, is enhanced by its coupling with an uncertainty analysis technique. The paper illustrates the use of this methodology on two practical test cases related to Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). These are the ideal candidates due to the multi-physics involved and the variability of missions to be performed. Results obtained from the optimisation show that the method is effective to find useful Pareto non-dominated solutions and demonstrate the use of robust design techniques.

Computer vision onboard UAVs for civilian tasks

Computer vision is much more than a technique to sense and recover environmental information from an UAV. It should play a main role regarding UAVs’ functionality because of the big amount of information that can be extracted, its possible uses and applications, and its natural connection to human driven tasks, taking into account that vision is our main interface to world understanding. Our current research’s focus lays on the development of techniques that allow UAVs to maneuver in spaces using visual information as their main input source. This task involves the creation of techniques that allow an UAV to maneuver towards features of interest whenever a GPS signal is not reliable or sufficient, e.g. when signal dropouts occur (which usually happens in urban areas, when flying through terrestrial urban canyons or when operating on remote planetary bodies), or when tracking or inspecting visual targets—including moving ones—without knowing their exact UMT coordinates. This paper also investigates visual serving control techniques that use velocity and position of suitable image features to compute the references for flight control. This paper aims to give a global view of the main aspects related to the research field of computer vision for UAVs, clustered in four main active research lines: visual serving and control, stereo-based visual navigation, image processing algorithms for detection and tracking, and visual SLAM. Finally, the results of applying these techniques in several applications are presented and discussed: this study will encompass power line inspection, mobile target tracking, stereo distance estimation, mapping and positioning.

Road network extraction with new vectorization and pruning from high-resolution RS images

With the increasing resolution of remote sensing images, road network can be displayed as continuous and homogeneity regions with a certain width rather than traditional thin lines. Therefore, road network extraction from large scale images refers to reliable road surface detection instead of road line extraction. In this paper, a novel automatic road network detection approach based on the combination of homogram segmentation and mathematical morphology is proposed, which includes three main steps: (i) the image is classified based on homogram segmentation to roughly identify the road network regions; (ii) the morphological opening and closing is employed to fill tiny holes and filter out small road branches; and (iii) the extracted road surface is further thinned by a thinning approach, pruned by a proposed method and finally simplified with Douglas-Peucker algorithm. Lastly, the results from some QuickBird images and aerial photos demonstrate the correctness and efficiency of the proposed process.

A miniaturised wideband frequency synthesiser

Wideband frequency synthesisers have application in many areas, including test instrumentation and defence electronics. Miniaturisation of these devices provides many advantages to system designers, particularly in applications where extra space and weight are expensive. The purpose of this project was to miniaturise a wideband frequency synthesiser and package it for operation in several different environmental conditions while satisfying demanding technical specifications. The four primary and secondary goals to be achieved were: 1. an operating frequency range from low MHz to greater than 40 GHz, with resolution better than 1 MHz, 2. typical RF output power of +10 dBm, with maximum DC supply of 15 W, 3. synthesiser package of only 150  100  30 mm, and 4. operating temperatures from 20C to +71C, and vibration levels over 7 grms. This task was approached from multiple angles. Electrically, the system is designed to have as few functional blocks as possible. Off the shelf components are used for active functions instead of customised circuits. Mechanically, the synthesiser package is designed for efficient use of the available space. Two identical prototype synthesisers were manufactured to evaluate the design methodology and to show the repeatability of the design. Although further engineering development will improve the synthesiser’s performance, this project has successfully demonstrated a level of miniaturisation which sets a new benchmark for wideband synthesiser design. These synthesisers will meet the demands for smaller, lighter wideband sources. Potential applications include portable test equipment, radar and electronic surveillance systems on unmanned aerial vehicles. They are also useful for reducing the overall weight and power consumption of other systems, even if small dimensions are not essential.

Solar powered UAV for fire prevention and planning

This project aims to develop a methodology for designing and conducting a systems engineering analysis to build and fly continuously, day and night, propelled uniquely by solar energy for one week with a 0.25Kg payload consuming 0.5 watt without fuel or pollution. An airplane able to fly autonomously for many days could find many applications. Including coastal or border surveillance, atmospherical and weather research and prediction, environmental, forestry, agricultural, and oceanic monitoring, imaging for the media and real-estate industries, etc. Additional advantages of solar airplanes are their low cost and the simplicity with which they can be launched. For example, in the case of potential forest fire risks during a warm and dry period, swarms of solar airplanes, easily launched with the hand, could efficiently monitor a large surface, reporting rapidly any fire starts. This would allow a fast intervention and thus reduce the cost of such disaster, in terms of human and material losses. At higher dimension, solar HALE platforms are expected to play a major role as communication relays and could replace advantageously satellites in a near future.