Bare Hands Research Articles

Microchips in humans: Consumer-friendly app, or new frontier in surveillance?

ABSTRACT There’s a new fad among technology aficionados: voluntarily injecting radio frequency identification chips under their skin. Self-described “bio-hackers” reason that by having such microchips inserted, they can pay for purchases by just hovering their bare hand over a scanner at a checkout counter instead of swiping the magnetic strip of a credit card, inserting a card into a chip reader, or displaying a smartphone app (or doing something as old-fashioned as paying cash). At first glance, such consumer technology looks like a harmless whim, or the next logical step among those who favor piercings, or the supposed ultimate in convenience. But inserting identification microchips in humans would also seem to bear the seeds of a particularly intrusive form of surveillance, at a time when authorities in some parts of the world have been forcibly collecting DNA and other biological data – including blood samples, fingerprints, voice recordings, iris scans, and other unique identifiers – from all their citizens. This article explains some of the nuts and bolts of this hybrid human-machine product.

Touchless interactive teaching of soft robots through flexible bimodal sensory interfaces

In this paper, we propose a multimodal flexible sensory interface for interactively teaching soft robots to perform skilled locomotion using bare human hands. First, we develop a flexible bimodal smart skin (FBSS) based on triboelectric nanogenerator and liquid metal sensing that can perform simultaneous tactile and touchless sensing and distinguish these two modes in real time. With the FBSS, soft robots can react on their own to tactile and touchless stimuli. We then propose a distance control method that enabled humans to teach soft robots movements via bare hand-eye coordination. The results showed that participants can effectively teach a self-reacting soft continuum manipulator complex motions in three-dimensional space through a “shifting sensors and teaching” method within just a few minutes. The soft manipulator can repeat the human-taught motions and replay them at different speeds. Finally, we demonstrate that humans can easily teach the soft manipulator to complete specific tasks such as completing a pen-and-paper maze, taking a throat swab, and crossing a barrier to grasp an object. We envision that this user-friendly, non-programmable teaching method based on flexible multimodal sensory interfaces could broadly expand the domains in which humans interact with and utilize soft robots.

Ecological Burden of e-Waste in Bangladesh-an Assessment to Measure the Exposure to e-Waste and Associated Health Outcomes: Protocol for a Cross-sectional Study.

Backgrounde-Waste is a rapidly growing waste stream worldwide, and Bangladesh is a hub of e-waste handling. Informal e-waste recycling operations involve crude methods for dismantling, repairing, sorting, and recycling electronic goods with bare hands and without personal health protections. Direct inhalation or dermal exposure to toxicants during informal recycling is common. Evidence suggests that e-waste–derived toxicants pollute the terrestrial ecosystem and have been linked with adverse health effects. However, e-waste recycling–related occupational health hazards have not been adequately explored in the context of Bangladesh.ObjectiveOur study aims to expand the current understanding of exposure to e-waste. This study will measure the metal concentrations in biological and environmental samples and evaluate the relationship between heavy metals and the biochemical systems of the e-waste workers.MethodsThe study uses a cross-sectional study design consisting of an exposed site and a nonexposed control site. The trained team collected information on individual exposures, detailed work and medical history, and biological samples (blood, urine, and hair) from each subject. This study will measure heavy metal levels (lead, cadmium, and mercury) and biochemical parameters (hematological, hormonal, renal, and others) from the biological samples with reported physical function as outcomes of interest. In addition, we also collected soil and dust samples from both exposed and nonexposed control sites to measure the health risk. All the environmental samples will be analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer to determine metal concentrations. We will also conduct a qualitative investigation for a deeper understanding of the e-waste management system in Bangladesh.ResultsThe protocol has been approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and The University of Queensland’s Human Behavioral Ethics Committee. Informed written consent was obtained from all participants. We recruited 199 workers from the e-waste sites with at least 5 years of exposure and 104 control subjects with no industrial or e-waste exposure. Sample analysis is estimated to be completed in 2022.ConclusionsAlthough many studies have identified potential adverse health outcomes from exposure to e-waste, there is a lack of published epidemiological research in Bangladesh. Research in this field is particularly pressing in the context of the current e-waste trend and the need to deepen the understanding of exposures and outcomes.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/38201

ReflectU: A Mirror-Based Intelligent Interactive System for Intuitive Remote Control

Large interactive displays (LID) are widely used in industrial scenarios to enhance ubiquitous and seamless human-machine interactions. However, few studies have pay attention to design implicit interaction that users can directly manipulate physical circumstance without touch or specific gesture. This paper proposes \emph{ReflectU}, a novel reflection-based approach that leverages mirror reflection for a natural and implicit interactive method for remote control, i.e., user will be able to directly interact with physical circumstance just via the reflection of their bare hands. We compare its performance with that of other two generally known devices: Wii Remoter and Microsoft Kinect. Moreover, performance metrics of ReflectU are evaluated in real-life scenario and provide evidence in convincing performance in both tasks requiring instant targeting and trajectory control. Furthermore, ReflectU is reported by users to be the most intuitive and satisfactory approach among all three candidates in user studies.

Food Handling and Personal Hygiene Practices among Momo Vendors in Jaipur City, Rajasthan

Street food is ready to eat food, easily available, and offers a lot of varied choices, supporting different sections of society differently. Along with numerous benefits, street food poses a great threat to public health in which street food vendors are major culprits. Vendors are often less educated and do not follow proper hygiene and safety practices. The present study was conducted to assess the hygiene and food handling practices of 100 momo vendors from five street food vending hubs of Jaipur city and to create awareness regarding safe food handling practices. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect data from them. Almost all the vendors served food with bare hands and without wearing apron. Majority (65%) of vendors did not keep raw and cooked food separate and non-food items were stored along with food supplies. In 37% of vending sites, flies were seen harboring in the vicinity of the vending units. Presence of pests such as cockroaches, ants, and rats was observed around 18% vending outlets. Vendors often follow a low level of personal hygiene practices. There is a need to regulate these vendors with mandatory training and certification. Collective efforts of both vendors and official authorities are required to bring the changes.

Gendered asymmetry of access to knowledge for brucellosis control among pastoral communities in north-west Côte d’Ivoire

Brucellosis is an infectious zoonotic disease considered as a threat to public health and pastoralist livelihoods. Symptoms of the disease can lead to gender-specific ailments such as abortions in women and orchitis in men. Pastoralists and their families are at high risk of contracting the disease. Access to health information reinforces existing knowledge and contributes to disease prevention. However, in developing countries, interventions for knowledge sharing on zoonotic diseases predominantly target men. This study aimed to describe mechanisms of knowledge production and transfer on brucellosis according to gender, by assessing the way knowledge affects behaviours of pastoral communities. A community-based cross-sectional survey was conducted among a pastoral community (PC) of the Folon region in north-west Côte d’Ivoire. The study included transhumant pastoralists, sedentary livestock owners, shepherds and their wives. By using mixed methods, 26 semi-structured interviews were conducted, and 320 questionnaires were completed. Statistical analysis with chi-square (χ2) comparison tests was performed to compare variables between men and women. Findings were interpreted through the concept of specialisation of the social exclusion theory. We found that gender influences access to information on brucellosis and transfer of knowledge on brucellosis appeared gender-biased, especially from veterinarians towards men in the community. The social labour division and interventions of veterinarians through awareness reinforce the knowledge gap on brucellosis between men and women. Men and women consume raw milk, whilst only men in general handle animal discharges with bare hands. To improve the control of brucellosis, knowledge on best practice should be shared with pastoral communities using the One Health approach that encourages mutual learning. Innovative strategies based on gender daily tasks such as safe dairy processing by women and safe animal husbandry to expand their herd for men can be the entry point for the prevention of brucellosis.

Occupational safety and health hazards in artisanal gold mines in western and Nyanza region, Kenya

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASSGM) has experienced rapid growth due to mineral value and increasing poverty level in western and Nyanza regions in Kenya. The sub-sector has hazardous tasks occasioned by chemical exposures to such substances as mercury, physical strain and repetitive movements associated with extractive tasks challenge which vary from region to region and site to site. This paper reports findings of a study conducted on ASSGM in Kakamega (Roster mine and Ikolomani) and Migori (Masara-Suna West and Francis - Suna East) counties to assess workplace safety, health risk and good health practice among a population of one thousand four hundred (1400) miners and non-miners to identify and determine levels of health hazard in the sector. Descriptive cross-sectional design that involved stratified sampling technique with three broad stages was used: dividing mining and non-mining population in sub-groups (miners, foremen/supervisors, and head of households) at sites in administering to them research instrument using a simple random technique. Levels of airborne particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) were determined both at mining sites and away from mining sites using low cost monitor sensor (PA-11-SD Purple air sensor). The low-cost monitor sensor data was corrected using collocational data obtained using a continuous particulate monitor (BAM 1020) reference monitor in a similar location. SPSS version 25.0 was used to analyse qualitative data. The study found that common sources of hazards included handling elemental mercury with bare hands during amalgamation and exposure to fumes during refining raw sponge-like gold. Aaverage 24-hour variation cycle for (PM2.5 and PM10) was 117.11±14.47 and 195.18±15.35 μg/m3 in ambient air respectively at all mining sites. Histograms were used to present frequency distribution of variations for (PM2.5 and PM10) from mining activity. The average humidity and temperature variations of artisanal gold mining were in the range of (45-35) percentage (% RH) and (26-28)0C respectively. The study concluded that there were high risk cycle exposures to airborne particulate matter contaminants at artisanal gold mining sites as compared to non- mining sites. The study recommends that the county government should give priority to developing safe guidelines to ASSGM. The central government should also come up with guidelines on Occupational Safety and Health in artisanal gold mining to facilitate compliance with OSH requirements in the sector and offer effective participative training.

3D Visual Tracking to Quantify Physical Contact Interactions in Human-to-Human Touch.

Across a plethora of social situations, we touch others in natural and intuitive ways to share thoughts and emotions, such as tapping to get one’s attention or caressing to soothe one’s anxiety. A deeper understanding of these human-to-human interactions will require, in part, the precise measurement of skin-to-skin physical contact. Among prior efforts, each measurement approach exhibits certain constraints, e.g., motion trackers do not capture the precise shape of skin surfaces, while pressure sensors impede skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, this work develops an interference-free 3D visual tracking system using a depth camera to measure the contact attributes between the bare hand of a toucher and the forearm of a receiver. The toucher’s hand is tracked as a posed and positioned mesh by fitting a hand model to detected 3D hand joints, whereas a receiver’s forearm is extracted as a 3D surface updated upon repeated skin contact. Based on a contact model involving point clouds, the spatiotemporal changes of hand-to-forearm contact are decomposed as six, high-resolution, time-series contact attributes, i.e., contact area, indentation depth, absolute velocity, and three orthogonal velocity components, together with contact duration. To examine the system’s capabilities and limitations, two types of experiments were performed. First, to evaluate its ability to discern human touches, one person delivered cued social messages, e.g., happiness, anger, sympathy, to another person using their preferred gestures. The results indicated that messages and gestures, as well as the identities of the touchers, were readily discerned from their contact attributes. Second, the system’s spatiotemporal accuracy was validated against measurements from independent devices, including an electromagnetic motion tracker, sensorized pressure mat, and laser displacement sensor. While validated here in the context of social communication, this system is extendable to human touch interactions such as maternal care of infants and massage therapy.

The use of corporal punishment against children in Myanmar: An analysis of data from the 2015–2016 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey

BackgroundThe corporal punishment of children is a significant public health concern; corporal punishment also violates children's rights and may have negative impacts on children's long-term health. ObjectiveThis study investigates the prevalence of corporal punishment of children in Myanmar and associated factors. Participant and settingThis study is a secondary data analysis of the 2015–2016 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS). The study targeted 13,235 (weighted) children between 2 and 14 years old. MethodsCorporal punishment of children by caregivers was assessed using six questions that utilized UNICEF's child disciplinary module. Multiple logistic regression analyses were carried out to identify associated factors. ResultsNearly half of the children in the study (44.5 %; 95 % confidence interval (CI): 42.60, 46.50) were found to have been subjected to corporal punishment, and the most common form of corporal punishment was “spanking, hitting, or slapping the child on the bottom with a bare hand” (29.1 %; 95 % CI: 27.53, 30.80). Multivariable analyses revealed that a child's sex, age, education level, location of residence, and number of family members; the primary caregiver's sex and attitude toward corporal punishment; and the family's socio-economic status were all factors significantly associated with corporal punishment. The prevalence of corporal punishment of children in Myanmar was high, and many significant predictors were identified. ConclusionThe implementation of child protection policies and the promotion of nonviolent parenting methods should be conducted immediately to community members. Community education should particularly focus on uneducated caregivers and families with low socioeconomic status.

SARS-CoV-2 environmental contamination in COVID-19 patient rooms in a VA medical center

Background: SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19 infection, can significantly contaminate environmental surfaces and can remain viable on surfaces for up to 9 days. Although respiratory route remains the most significant mode of transmission, fomites and environmental sources of infection remain a concern for healthcare personnel who are working in dedicated COVID-19 units. We investigated the extent of detectable SARS-CoV-2 contamination in the environment of COVID-19 patients at a single VA hospital, with the intent of identifying potential high-touch surfaces at risk for viral contamination, which could be used to inform the development of simple COVID-19 prevention strategies. Methods: We conducted a cohort study at 1 VA hospital in a unit housing adult veterans admitted with COVID-19 between October and December 2020. In total, 11 swab specimens were collected for PCR analysis (SARS-CoV-2 env gene) from environmental surfaces inside and just outside the rooms of COVID-19 patients one time. Retrospective chart reviews were conducted to provide the SARS-CoV-2 epidemiologic context for environmental detection. Results: In total, 297 swabs were collected from the unit and environmental areas surrounding 27 hospitalized patients: average age, 72.5 years (range, 34–94); 100% male; 92% non-Hispanic white; average comorbidities, 1.8 (SD, 1.1). Of 297 swabs, 80 (27%) were positive for SARS-CoV-2 and 19 (70%) of 27 patients had at least 1 positive site. The most contaminated site was the floor just outside the patient room (78% positive samples), followed by the patient’s bedrail (37%) and chair handle (37%) (Fig. 1). Traditionally high-touch surfaces, such as the door handle (outside patient room) and the light switch, did not have high positivity rates (<15%). Interestingly, both the personal protective equipment (PPE) cart outside patient’s room (33%) and the double doors leading out of the unit (19%) were positive, which are surfaces often touched with bare hands after handwashing. Analyses of clinical data are underway to examine whether specific care needs, based on activities of daily living disability, comorbidities, and clinical presentation of COVID-19, predict SARS-CoV-2 environmental contamination. Conclusions: The presence of environmental contamination by SARS-CoV-2 highlights the importance of transmission via direct or indirect contact. Studies targeting high-risk populations are needed to better understand the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 between infected patients and their environment. Our findings also suggest that handwashing and attention to using disinfecting wipes may mitigate the risk of transmission of virus from surfaces that one might consider safe to touch.Funding: NoneDisclosures: None

Experimental Study on the Response of Hand-Transmitted Vibration from an EVA Power Tool

The objective of this paper is to accurately measure the vibration response of tools and hands by simulating the hand-held power tools, which are operated by astronauts wearing extravehicular spacesuit gloves under microgravity conditions. The total vibration value and the daily vibration exposure of the subject’s hand are obtained. The results show that the opisthenar is more sensitive to the vibration frequency less than 200 Hz. After frequency weighting, the vibration exposure in the composite state of wearing an unpressurized spacesuit glove on the opisthenar is 23.6% greater than the vibration exposure of the palm, and for the bare hand, the percentage is 25.1% under the same condition. Because the operation time of tightening a screw is longer than that of loosening, the tightening operation performed by wearing spacesuit gloves produces 15.7% more mean vibration exposure on the palm and opisthenar than the loosening operation. The results of vibration transmissibility characterized by the total vibration weighted method and the total vibration unweighted method are 0.039 and 0.094, respectively. In comparison with bare hands, the mean daily vibration exposure on the palm and opisthenar in the composite state by wearing spacesuit gloves is 16.3% less, indicating that the unpressurized spacesuit gloves have an effect on vibration reduction. The research reveals the law of hand-transmitted vibration caused by the coupling of the extravehicular activities (EVA) power tools and spacesuit gloves, and provides a novel method for further similar tests and verification of hand-held EVA power tools.

Microcontroller Based Portable Coconut Tapping Mechanism With Audio Signal Filtering

Philippines is one of agricultural land in Asia. In most part of the country agriculture plays a significant role in the economy. As technology evolve throughout the years, smart sensor achieved tremendous contribution in agriculture that helps the farmers to utilize insubstantial resources with paltry human mediation. Traditionally, farmers and coconut sellers determine coconut maturity by listening intensively to the sound produced by knocking manually either bare hands or knives. The ability of farmers to characterize the maturity of coconut declines as they age. Therefore, a scientific methodology to the measurement of ripeness levels seems to be of main significance. The proposed study focused on developing a microcontroller-based portable coconut tapping mechanism with audio signal filtering that can help other researchers gather data from the audio signal. The purpose is to find the average value and or ranges of values current flow reading based on varying speed which can be used in classifying coconuts maturity level. The tapping mechanism provide signal for detection and diagnosis, using the engineering principles and concepts the system uses different tapping strokes to determine the consistency of the movement. The raw data acquired from the tapping device were stored in the SD card and filtering of the acquired signal would be done through MATLAB software. The results of the experiment were described using averages and differences were tested for significance using ANOVA. The results showed that the differences in the results are not significant, implying the tapping machine's consistency

Withdrawal of U.S. Military Engagement and The Erosion of Liberal Democratization: An Afghan Perspective

The recent humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan denotes the failure of US-led liberal democratization in authoritarian and non-democratic countries, especially in the Muslim world. Having been witnessed a long-term war in a foreign land, after a detailed deliberation in the Doha agreement, the U.S. military stand-up has been overthrown with the rise of the Taliban. It can be viewed as a failed policy of the U.S. government since the emergence of the "War on Terror" to improve the stability in Afghanistan. Instead of allowing democratic reforms and good governance, the U.S. fulfilled its false desire to dismantle terrorism and religious fundamentalism. Ultimately, the U.S. completely degraded its moral strength to universalize democratic values and representative government. After bloody decades, all the U.S. military forces returned to their motherland with a bare hand but left an uncertain future for Afghan people that had to be resolved through consensus.

Prevalence, emotional and follow-up burden of insulin injection-related needle-stick injuries among clinical nurses in Shaanxi Province, west of China: A cross-sectional study.

Aims and objectivesThe aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence, emotional and follow‐up burden of insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries among clinical nurses.Backgroundneedle‐stick injures introduce statistically significant occupational hazards to healthcare workers. Although the large proportion of the needles injuries attributed to insulin injection, research evidence about the prevalence, emotional and follow‐up burden of such injures is lacking.DesignCross‐sectional study.Methods5389 nurses were recruited from 45 hospitals in Shaanxi, China, from November 2018 to July 2019. Participants were administrated with a questionnaire specifically developed for this study. Descriptive statistics were used to present the findings.ResultsAll 5,389 nurses responded to the survey, of which 396 (7.4%) participants experienced 620 insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries in the past year, representing an annual prevalence of 115.0 per 1000 nurses. The annual prevalence of infection caused by the injuries was 18.7 per 1000 nurses. The injuries occurred most frequently when nurses were recapping the needle (42.4%). In the majority (98.4%) of the injuries, the hurt nurses took proper immediate actions. However, only 30.3% of nurses reported the injuries to the administrative staff, and in 43.2% of the injuries, the nurses refused or discontinued the suggested follow‐up. A large proportion (58.6%) of the hurt nurses experienced emotional changes. Multivariate logistic regression showed that department, removing and/or setting back needle caps with bare hands, frequency of insulin pen and syringes are associated with the incidence of insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries. This paper is reported following the STROBE recommendations.ConclusionsThis survey demonstrated a considerably high prevalence of insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries among clinical nurses. Even though the majority of the hurt nurses took proper immediate actions, a large quantity of them failed to report the accidents to the administrative staff and complete the suggested follow‐up. Nurses who suffered from insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries were subject to various negative emotional changes. It portends a statistically significant risk to occupational health management for nurses.Relevance to clinical practiceScientific preventive and management strategies are desirable in order to minimize the consequences of insulin injection‐related needle‐stick injuries.

Online tools to easily build virtual molecular models for display in augmented and virtual reality on the web

Several groups developed in the last years augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) software to visualize 3D molecules, most rather static, limited in content, and requiring software installs, some even requiring expensive hardware. We launched in 2020 moleculARweb (https://molecularweb.epfl.ch), a website that offers interactive content for chemistry and structural biology education through commodity web-based AR that works on consumer devices like smartphones, tablets and laptops. Among thousands of users, teachers increasingly request more biological macromolecules to be available, a demand that we cannot address individually. Therefore, to allow users to build their own material, we built a web interface where they can create online AR experiences in few steps starting from Protein Data Bank, AlphaFold or custom uploaded structures, or from virtual objects/scenes exported from the Visual Molecular Dynamics program, without any programming knowledge. The web tool also returns WebXR sessions for viewing and manipulating the models in WebXR-compatible devices including smartphones, tablets, and also immersive VR headsets with WebXR-capable browsers, where models can be manipulated even with bare hands when supported by the device. The tool is accessible for free at https://molecularweb.epfl.ch/pages/pdb2ar.html.

Design and development of a vision‐based system for detection, tracking and recognition of isolated dynamic bare hand gesticulated characters

AbstractDetection and tracking are the vital stages to form the gesture trajectory in gesture recognition. It becomes more challenging when the variations in illumination, pose, position, occlusion, scale, speed, blurring effect and complex environment are introduced. Additionally, the background feature domination effect affects the existing deep learning models. A semantic segmentation model is implemented in this work to detect the bare hand to overcome these challenges. A pre‐trained network VGG‐16 is utilized by training with the proposed NITS S‐Net database. Evaluation of the SegNet model is done on EgoHands, Oxford and OUHands databases. To track the bare hand, a SegNet‐based detection and tracking approach is proposed using Kalman filter and point‐tracker. This model achieves 97.01% accuracy (a relative improvement of ~8% from the baseline models) at 0.068 s per frame computational time on NITS hand gesture database VIIIB. The gesticulated characters, that is, alphabets, numbers, operators, special characters, are gesticulated without any constraints on the pattern/strokes. To recognize these 95 multi‐stroke gestures, a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) is presented using AlexNet. The DCNN model achieves 97.60% (a relative improvement of ~14% from the baseline models) accuracy on the NITS hand gesture database VIIIB merged. Evaluation of the handwritten EMNIST merged (balanced) database resulted in average recognition accuracy of 91.60%.

MmEat: Millimeter wave-enabled environment-invariant eating behavior monitoring

Dietary habits are closely related to people’s health condition. Unhealthy diet can cause obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, as well as increase the risk of cancers. It is necessary to have a monitoring system that helps people keep tracking his/her eating behaviors. Traditional sensor-based and camera-based dietary monitoring systems either require users to wear dedicated devices or may potentially incur privacy concerns. WiFi-based methods, though yielding reasonably robust performance in certain cases, have major limitations. The wireless signals usually carry substantial information that is specific to the environment where eating activities are performed. To overcome these limitations, we propose mmEat, a millimeter wave-enabled environment-invariant eating behavior monitoring system. In particular, we propose an environment impact mitigation method by analyzing mmWave signals in Dopper-Range domain. To differentiate dietary activities with various utensils (i.e., eating with fork, fork and knife, spoon, chopsticks, bare hand) for fine-grained eating behavior monitoring, we construct Spatial–Temporal Heatmap by integrating multiple dimensional measurements. We further utilize an unsupervised learning-based 2D segmentation method and an eating period derivation algorithm to estimate time duration of each eating activity. Our system has the potential to infer the food categories and eating speed. Extensive experiments with over 1000 eating activities show that our system can achieve dietary activity recognition with an average accuracy of 97.5% and a false detection rate of 5%.

Chasing for water monitors using dogs in West Java, Indonesia: a recreational hunting or pest control?

Wildlife hunting for subsistence is mostly reported in rural areas and performed by traditional people. Whereas it is also practiced in urban areas and targeted for abundant urban species such as the. water monitor (Varanus salvator). Urban hunting may be linked to pest control or pastime activity, which could be beneficial for wildlife management. Our purpose of study was to investigate hunting practice of water monitor in Bogor area, West Java, Indonesia. Data was collected between January and June 2020 to find characteristics and motivation of hunters, their hunting methods, and harvests. We were able to conduct face-to-face interviews with 42 local urban people, whom we followed in four huntinggroups during their search for wildlife. Generally, hunters were students, workers, or laborers, who hunt only during the weekends. To capture water monitors, some hunters used dogs and air rifles, while some others used nothing but bare hands. During our observation, 157 individual water monitors were targeted, but only 150 were caught. There were several motivations for hunters to target water monitors apart from being a hobby, i.e., for food and to eliminate pest. Due to its motivation and strategy, we consider the hunt for water monitor in Bogor area mainly for recreational purposes.

Development and Evaluation of Mechanized Fish Paste Maker

The Philippines, being surrounded by water has an abundant source of fish; making fish processing one of the established industries in the country. Fish paste-making provides an opportunity to make the unsold fish useful and saleable. Traditionally, the method of fish paste making is manually processed as it involves the use of bare hands; hygiene, sanitation, and increasing labor cost hinder the profitability of the business. This study employed developmental research to produce a machine that can provide a solution to the fish paste industry. Since bare hands are mostly used during mixing, squeezing, and straining of salt and fish; the mechanized fish paste maker combines the mixing and straining process in one compartment to prevent the manual handling of raw materials. The developed machine was evaluated to determine the operation's performance based on functionality, durability, efficiency, and safety. The grand mean of 4.57 defined that the product met the intended purpose, had durable design and materials, was efficient and consistent in providing ease of operation and safe to use. The time and motion study further proved that the use of the machine lessens the production process by almost half of the normal duration and can guarantee an increase in the number of bottles produced. More importantly, the cost-benefit analysis showed that the machine is capable to increase the production benefits as it lessens the manual cost and other production costs.

A selective region-based detection and tracking approach towards the recognition of dynamic bare hand gesture using deep neural network

A selective region-based detection and tracking approach towards the recognition of dynamic bare hand gesture using deep neural network