Easy Data Acquisition Research Articles

Carbon Footprint Assessment Based on Agricultural Traceability System Records: A Case Study of Onion Production in Southern Taiwan

This study proposes an improved methodology based on life cycle assessment (LCA), which is used to calculate the carbon footprint of agriculture, provides a simple and feasible calculation path, and constructs a streamlined framework for calculating the carbon footprint based on the agricultural traceability system records. Using important economic crop (Onion) as research subject, and choose the largest planting area in R.O.C. (southern Taiwan) as a case study. A total of 64 farm production history records have been collected, includes all of farms certified with a traceable agricultural products (TAP) label. Through a detailed analysis of the traditional carbon footprint calculation method, found that agricultural traceability system records could replace the data source in carbon footprint verification (CFV) process, and system records could be used as activity data after being organized. With our method, no need to go through a complicated CFV process, just download the existing data on agricultural traceability system, can start calculating carbon footprint as soon as possible. To compared to traditional assessment method, results show a margin of error is less than 6% compared to traditional assessment methods. Advantages of improved method were be found, such as easy data acquisition, simplified calculation steps, and improved data transparency and accuracy. From statistical data, show that at least seven categories of carbon emission sources for carbon footprints, the most significant of carbon emission impact are fertilizers. The result of improved methodology based on life cycle assessment (LCA), show that using the improved methods can help promote the carbon footprint management efficiency of agricultural organizations such as Farmers’ Association or Agricultural Production Marketing Group, promptly monitor the carbon footprint status of their fields and adjust strategies to reduce carbon footprints in real-time, advancing towards the goal of net-zero carbon emissions.

Spatio-temporal heterogeneity of ecological water level in Poyang Lake, China

Anthropogenic activities and climate change have caused physical and ecological changes in lakes and have aggravated water level fluctuations, which are essential factors to consider for nutrient import, ecological protection, and biodiversity maintenance. Maintaining water levels within a reasonable range is essential for maintaining lake function and ecological health, because ecosystem stability is compromised when water level fluctuations exceed specific thresholds. Thus, the ecological water level (EWL) is an important index for maintaining aquatic habitats and biodiversity. A method for quantifying the EWL of lakes based on hydrological statistical analysis was constructed to bridge the gaps in existing studies, considering both the hydrological alteration and spatio-temporal heterogeneity of water level fluctuations. Taking Poyang Lake as an example, which has recently attracted increasing global attention owing to its water level alterations and subsequent ecological problems, the applicability of the method and rationality of the results were verified. The results indicate that hydrological alteration occurs at the water level of the representative stations, which is jointly affected by climate change and anthropogenic activities in this region. For instance, the construction and operation of the Three Gorges Project affected the water level alteration at Hukou and Xingzi station, and drought further aggravated that of Xingzi station. The calculated EWL of Poyang Lake showed obvious spatio-temporal heterogeneity, which is consistent with the topographic, geographical, and climatic characteristics of the basin. And the rationality of the EWL in this study was verified through literature reviews and satisfiability of characteristic species requirements. The proposed EWL calculation method is simple and feasible with easy data acquisition, strong universality, and broad application prospects, offering a scientific basis and quantitative reference for water resource management and lake ecosystem protection.

Extraction of Rocky Desertification Information in the Karst Area Based on the Red-NIR-SWIR Spectral Feature Space

The complex topography, severe surface fragmentation and landscape heterogeneity of the karst region of southwest China make it extremely difficult to extract information on rocky desertification in the region. In order to overcome the disadvantages of the surface parameter-based feature space approach, which is difficult to construct and apply, this study uses the reflectance of Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) in the red (Red), near-infrared (NIR) and shortwave infrared (SWIR) bands as the feature variables, and establishes a two-dimensional SWIR-NIR, Red-NIR and SWIR-Red reflectance spectral feature space. The three models of perpendicular rocky desertification index 1 (PRDI1), perpendicular rocky desertification index 2 (PRDI2) and perpendicular rocky desertification index 3 (PRDI3) were also constructed based on the variation of the degree of rocky desertification in each spectral feature space. The accuracy of the rocky desertification extracted by these three index models was verified and compared with the karst rocky desertification index (KRDI) and rocky desertification difference index (RSDDI), which are constructed based on the surface parameter feature space. The results show that: (1) The waveband reflectance-based feature space model provides a new method for large-scale rocky desertification information extraction, characterized by easy data acquisition, simple index calculation and good stability, and is conducive to the monitoring and quantitative analysis of rocky desertification in karst areas. (2) The overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient of PRDI1 are 0.829 and 0.784, respectively, both higher than other index models, showing the best applicability, accuracy and effectiveness in rocky desertification information extraction. (3) According to the results extracted from PRDI1, the total area of rocky desertification in Huaxi District of Guizhou province is 320.44 km2, with the more serious grades of rocky desertification, such as severe and moderate, mainly distributed in the southwestern, western and southeastern areas of Huaxi District. This study provides important information on the total area and spatial distribution of different degrees of rocky desertification in the study area, and these results can be used to support the local government’s ecological and environmental management decisions. The method proposed in this study is a scientific and necessary complement to the characteristic spatial methods based on different surface parameters, and can provide important methodological support for the rapid and efficient monitoring of karstic rocky desertification over large areas.

Forward Electromagnetic Induction Modelling in a Multilayered Half-Space: An Open-Source Software Tool

Electromagnetic induction (EMI) techniques are widely used in geophysical surveying. Their success is mainly due to their easy and fast data acquisition, but the effectiveness of data inversion is strongly influenced by the quality of sensed data, resulting from suiting the device configuration to the physical features of the survey site. Forward modelling is an essential tool to optimize this aspect and design a successful surveying campaign. In this paper, a new software tool for forward EMI modelling is introduced. It extends and complements an existing open-source package for EMI data inversion, and includes an interactive graphical user interface. Its use is explained by a theoretical introduction and demonstrated through a simulated case study. The nonlinear data inversion issue is briefly discussed and the inversion module of the package is extended by a new regularized minimal-norm algorithm.

Focus on software, data acquisition, and instrumentation

Focus on software, data acquisition, and instrumentation

Research on Innovative Design of Product Packaging Based on Big Data Technology

Traditional product packaging design mainly relies on the designer's personal experience and intuition, but there are problems such as uncontrollable content and lack of knowledge and guidance in the field of product design. With the development of big data technology, product packaging design in the era of big data is carried out under the support of a large amount of real data, which has high predictability, success rate, and short development cycle. Compared with structured data, unstructured data such as text, images, and audio has a higher value. Among them, text big data and image big data have good application prospects in the field of product packaging design due to their easy data acquisition, mature processing technology, and simple operation. This paper proposes a combination of big data technology and neural style transfer model and proposes an innovative design method for product packaging that can generate high-quality images and controllable content. First, the perceptual engineering theory is used to obtain user needs, to build a mapping model between product modeling elements and product semantics, and to guide the selection of product semantics and style maps; second, use neural style transfer models to reconstruct and combine the color features of style maps. After the integration, it migrated to product packaging design, based on big data product packaging innovation design methods, and developed a product innovation design auxiliary prototype system based on actual needs to improve the company’s R&D and innovation capabilities, shorten product development cycles, and reduce R&D costs. Improve product success rate and user satisfaction.

An efficient IoT based biomedical health monitoring and diagnosing system using myRIO

With the growing and aging population, patient auto monitoring systems are becoming more popular. Smart sensors linked with the internet of things (IoT) make patients' auto monitoring system possible. Nowadays myRIO with LabVIEW is more popular for easy data acquisition, instrument control, and automation. This paper proposed myRIO and IoT based health monitoring and diagnosing system (HMDS) to acquire heartbeat rate, pulse, blood pressure (BP), temperature and activities of the patient using various smart sensors with more accuracy. The acquired raw data from the various sensors had been sent to the myRIO using ESP 8266 Wi-Fi module. The received raw data by the myRIO would be processed to the equivalent medical parameters using LabVIEW and the same might be transferred to the remote monitoring system (RMS) using cloud via a gateway. The abnormalities in the obtained data would be monitored and the diagnosis was made. The experimental setup was developed using various wearable sensors, ESP 8266, myRIO with LabVIEW and cloud with the gateway.

CoSense

We present coSense —the collaborative, fault-tolerant, and adaptive sensing middleware for the Internet-of-Things (IoT). By actively harnessing the greatest asset of the IoT, the sheer number of devices, coSense is able to provide easy data acquisition with quality-of-service-based data cleaning by combining unsupervised learning and information fusion. It can also greatly improve sensor accuracy and fault tolerance to produce measurements specifically tailored for modern data-driven IoT empowered applications. In this article, we focus on the general concepts behind coSense and evaluate the accuracy gain based on a real-world dataset.

A Review of Research on Light Visual Perception of Unmanned Surface Vehicles

Unmanned surface vehicles have the advantages of maneuverability, concealment, wide activity area and low cost of use. Therefore, they have broad application prospects. This makes unmanned surface vehicles a research hotspot at home and abroad, and the sensing technology is the basis for the unmanned surface vehicles to perform tasks. The perception technology based on optical vision has the advantages of convenient application, relatively low cost, easy data acquisition and large amount of information, and has been widely studied by scholars at home and abroad. This paper mainly discusses the research of optical vision in unmanned surface vehicles from five aspects: Firstly, the water surface image preprocessing based on unmanned surface vehicles, mainly including water surface image defogging enhancement research; second is the use of light vision target detection; the next is the surface target tracking methods. Finally, the light vision research of unmanned surface vehicles is summarized and forecasted.

An Improved Method for the Calibration of a 2-D LiDAR With Respect to a Camera by Using a Checkerboard Target

This paper proposes an improved method for the calibration of a 2D LiDAR or a planar scanning laser rangefinder with respect to a camera, which uses the same checkerboard target as in the camera calibration. To address one of the drawbacks in the LiDAR calibration with a checkerboard, the sensitivity to checkerboard poses, laser points on the checkerboard are obtained from both the originally positioned LiDAR and the same LiDAR vertically rotated from the original position, in the proposed calibration. They construct the additional constraints with the normal vector of the checkerboard, and strengthen the basic point-on-plane constraints in the LiDAR calibration with a checkerboard. However, in practice, the LiDAR rotation can be imprecise. Thus, we further develop the calibration procedure and examine its calibration performance, in the presence of such impreciseness in the LiDAR rotation. A performance analysis is conducted with synthetic noisy data, and it is confirmed that the proposed calibration yields smaller error in the parameter estimation than a conventional baseline calibration method. Subsequently, we examine the calibration performance with real data, where the proposed calibration is carried out by building a calibration system. It is shown that the proposed calibration also has more consistency in the parameter estimation. For further study, we compare the proposed calibration based on point-on-plane constraints with a calibration based on point-to-point constraints, and show that the proposed calibration, with easier data acquisition, yields comparable results.

New CAEN R&D for power supplies and data acquisition systems

Since over 40 years, delivering state of art Power Supplies and Acquisition Systems for Nuclear, Cosmic and High Energy Physics detectors has been the constant mission of the CAEN R&D groups, working closely with the relevant scientists of major research labs worldwide. This paper will focus on some of these R&Ds concerning new power supplies specifically designed for the HL-LHC and new solutions for data acquisition in large experiments thanks to a modular approach or faster digitizers with open FPGA. The new power supply system, EASY6000, is introduced along its main new features like higher radiation tolerance to safely operate thru the whole LHC life span. Furthermore, the new system power density and efficiency in hostile environment are also analyzed, to better understand how much power can be directly delivered to the front-end of new detectors, moreover the communication link between the experiments and the control rooms is also reviewed. Among the data acquisition solutions a new family of digitizers is introduced featuring open FPGA and faster performance. Alongside, the Front End and Readout System (FERS) is presented: this new architecture provides a scalable and easy customizable data acquisition system, the concept is therefore introduced and the first prototypes are described, with their main characteristics.

Comprehensive Provenance Analysis and Its Applications to Eocene Clastic Rocks in the Huimin Depression, Bohai Bay Basin, China

Clarification of the source of the Eocene sediments filling the Huimin depression provides significant support for current and future oil and gas exploration in the Bohai Bay Basin, China. A comprehensive assessment of sediment provenance based on sandstone petrography, heavy mineral assemblages, seismic reflection data, and distribution of sandstone bodies of the Shahejie Formation (Es2) to the Dongying Formation (Ed) productive interval based on both its macroscopic and microscopic provenance aspects. This method of analysis has the advantages of easy data acquisition, high accuracy, strong flexibility, wide application range, and making the analysis of sedimentary provenances more systematic. Comprehensive analysis of the Huimin depression, Bohai Bay Basin has revealed further that the origin of the Eocene second member of the Shahejie Formation (Es2) to the Dongying Formation (Ed) provenance system was derived from the Linfanjia high, the Chengning uplift, and the Luxi uplift.

Abstract 1955: A preclinical ultrasound platform for widefield 3D imaging of rodent tumors

Abstract Background: Preclinical ultrasound (US) and contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging have long been used in oncology to noninvasively measure tumor volume and vascularity. While the value of preclinical US has been repeatedly demonstrated, these modalities are not without several key limitations that make them unattractive to cancer researchers, including: high user-variability, low throughput, and limited imaging field-of-view (FOV). Herein, we present a novel robotic preclinical US/CEUS system that addresses these limitations and demonstrates its use in evaluating tumors in 3D in a rodent model. Methods: The imaging system was designed to allow seamless whole-body 3D imaging, which requires rodents to be imaged without physical contact between the US transducer and the animal. To achieve this, a custom dual-element transducer was mounted on a robotic carriage, submerged in a hydrocarbon fluid, and the reservoir sealed with an acoustically transmissive top platform. Eight NOD/scid/gamma (NSG) female mice were injected subcutaneously in the flank with 8×109 786-O human clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) cells. Weekly imaging commenced after tumors reached a size of 150 mm3 and continued until tumors reached a maximum size of 1 cm3 (∼4-5 weeks). An additional six nude athymic female mice were injected subcutaneously in the flank with 7 × 105 SVR angiosarcoma cells to perform an inter-operator variability study. Imaging consisted of 3D B-mode (conventional ultrasound) of the whole abdomen (< 1 min), as well as contrast-enhanced acoustic angiography (< 10 min) to measure blood vessel density (BVD). Tumors were manually segmented in 3D (< 2 min) and inter-operator and inter-reader reliability was assessed with Krippendorff’s alpha. Results: Wide-field US images reconstructed from 3D volumetric data showed superior FOV over conventional US. Several anatomical landmarks could be identified within each image surrounding the tumor, including the liver, small intestines, bladder, and inguinal lymph nodes. Tumor boundaries were clearly delineated in both B-mode and BVD images, with BVD images showing heterogeneous microvessel density at later timepoints suggesting tumor necrosis. Excellent agreement was measured for both inter-reader and inter-operator experiments, with alpha coefficients of 0.914 (95% CI: 0.824-0.948) and 0.959 (0.911-0.981), respectively. Conclusion: We have demonstrated a novel preclinical US imaging system that can accurately and consistently evaluate tumors in rodent models. The system leverages cost-effective robotic technology, and a new scanning paradigm that allows for easy and reproducible data acquisition to enable wide-field, 3D, multi-parametric ultrasound imaging. Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting. Citation Format: Tomasz Czernuszewicz, Virginie Papadopoulou, Juan D. Rojas, Rajalekha Rajamahendiran, Jonathan Perdomo, James Butler, Max Harlacher, Graeme O'Connell, Dzenan Zukic, Paul A. Dayton, Stephen Aylward, Ryan C. Gessner. A preclinical ultrasound platform for widefield 3D imaging of rodent tumors [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1955.

Capacitive electrode sensor implanted on a printed circuit board designed for continuous water level measurement

Water level sensors are one of the practical ways to get the actual measurement of the depth of a dam or canal. The ease of deployment and easy data acquisition makes them widely used in many fields. Therefore, it will be advantageous to have a miniaturized water level sensor for easier mobility and deployment. A novel method for measuring water level using a Printed Circuit Board has been proposed in this paper. The design stages of circuit sketching, printing of sketch on PCB and etching are discussed for the electrode water level sensor. A signal conditioning circuit is necessary to maintain a steady flow of current from the power source. The fabricated electrode water level sensor was tested based on its capacitive effect while charging up and the amount of current at each electrode finger at the saturation stage. The hardware enablers for this test were the multimeter and LCR meter. Arduino microprocessor was used to test and measure the transient response time for each electrode finger. The transient response sensitivity of the electrode sensor is measured to be 0.0873 millisecond/cm while the resolution of the electrode sensor is 0.1cm over a range of 30cm water level. A multiple correlation of 0.921 was achieved for the water level, measured current and measured capacitance with P-values less than 0.05 indicating strength of the data obtained from the tests conducted. The result showed strong evidence that the electrode water level sensor can be an alternative method of measuring water level.

A low-cost, human-like, high-resolution, tactile sensor based on optical fibers and an image sensor

Tactile sensors are commonly a coordinated group of receptors forming a matrix array meant to measure force or pressure similar to the human skin. Optic-based tactile sensors are flexible, sensitive, and fast; however, the human fingertip’s spatial resolution, which can be regarded as the desired spatial resolution, still could not be reached because of their bulky nature. This article proposes a novel and patented optic-based tactile sensor design, in which fiber optic cables are used to increase the number of sensory receptors per square centimeter. The proposed human-like high-resolution tactile sensor design is based on simple optics and image processing techniques, and it enables high spatial resolution and easy data acquisition at low cost. This design proposes using the change in the intesity of the light occured due to the deformation on contact/measurement surface. The main idea is using fiber optic cables as the afferents of the human physiology which can have 9 µm diameters for both delivering and receiving light beams. The variation of the light intensity enters sequent mathematical models as the input, then, the displacement, the force, and the pressure data are evaluated as the outputs. A prototype tactile sensor is manufactured with 1-mm spatial and 0.61-kPa pressure measurement resolution with 0–15.6 N/cm2 at 30 Hz sampling frequency. Experimental studies with different scenarios are conducted to demonstrate how this state-of-the-art design worked and to evaluate its performance. The overall accuracy of the first prototype, based on different scenarios, is calculated as 93%. This performance is regarded as promising for further developments and applications such as grasp control or haptics.

Raman hyperspectral imaging as an effective and highly informative tool to study the diagenetic alteration of fossil bones

Retrieving the pristine chemical or isotopic composition of archaeological bones is of great interest for many studies aiming to reconstruct the past life of ancient populations (i.e. diet, mobility, palaeoenvironment, age). However, from the death of the individual onwards, bones undergo several taphonomic and diagenetic processes that cause the alteration of their microstructure and composition. A detailed study on bone diagenesis has the double purpose to assess the preservation state of archaeological bones and to understand the alteration pathways, thus providing evidence that may contribute to evaluate the reliability of the retrieved information. On these bases, this research aims to explore the effectiveness of Raman hyperspectral imaging to detect types, extent and spatial distribution of diagenetic alteration at the micro-scale level. An early-Holocene bone sample from the Al Khiday cemetery (Khartoum, Sudan) was here analysed. Parameters related to the collagen content, bioapatite crystallinity and structural carbonate content, and to the occurrence of secondary mineral phases were calculated from Raman spectra. The acquired data provided spatially-resolved information on both the preservation state of bone constituents and the diagenetic processes occurring during burial. Given the minimal sample preparation, the easy and fast data acquisition and the improvement of system configurations, micro-Raman spectroscopy can be extensively applied as a screening method on a large set of samples in order to characterise the preservation state of archaeological bones. This technique can be effectively applied to identify suitable and well preserved portions of the analysed sample on which perform further analyses.

Current Clinical Applications of Three-Dimensional Echocardiography: When the Technique Makes the Difference.

Advances in ultrasound, computer, and electronics technology have permitted three-dimensional echocardiography (3DE) to become a clinically viable imaging modality, with significant impact on patient diagnosis, management, and outcome. Thanks to the inception of a fully sampled matrix transducer for transthoracic and transesophageal probes, 3DE now offers much faster and easier data acquisition, immediate display of anatomy, and the possibility of online quantitative analysis of cardiac chambers and heart valves. The clinical use of transthoracic 3DE has been primarily focused, albeit not exclusively, on the assessment of cardiac chamber volumes and function. Transesophageal 3DE has been applied mostly for assessing heart valve anatomy and function. The advantages of using 3DE to measure cardiac chamber volumes derive from the lack of geometric assumptions about their shape and the avoidance of the apical view foreshortening, which are the main shortcomings of volume calculations from two-dimensional echocardiographic views. Moreover, 3DE offers a unique realistic en face display of heart valves, congenital defects, and surrounding structures allowing a better appreciation of the dynamic functional anatomy of cardiac abnormalities in vivo. Offline quantitation of 3DE data sets has made significant contributions to our mechanistic understanding of normal and diseased heart valves, as well as of their alterations induced by surgical or interventional procedures. As reparative cardiac surgery and transcatheter procedures become more and more popular for treating structural heart disease, transesophageal 3DE has expanded its role as the premier technique for procedure planning, intra-procedural guidance, as well as for checking device function and potential complications after the procedure.

Optimal Site Selection for Electric Vehicles Inductive Charging Station in a Car Park Infrastructure

Objective: Proper site selection of an electric vehicle to transfer the optimal power from grid to vehicle in a car park infrastructure. Analysis: In this sense, Fuzzy Logic Controller is designed in NI based LabVIEW platform. The controller is simulated through the graphical designing software, which has the capability of easy data acquisition, processing, monitoring and controlling. After that the practical application of this software in automobile industry provides a better performance of the respective unit which can reduce the cost and save the time. Findings: In this near future, electric and hybrid electric vehicles will play an important role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Since these vehicles use electricity as their primary fuel, it provides one of the most anticipating approaches towards the reduction of exhaust gas pollution. It has more or less impact on local or global emission profiles. Inductive charging station is a form of wireless charging workplace which uses electromagnetic field to transfer the energy from charging station to vehicle. This advanced technology needs a proper place alignment to park the vehicle in car park infrastructure. In this study, the most sustainable site selection method for this specific type of charging is investigated in an optimal way. This advanced controller will give a precise place alignment for car parking. The controller will be activated depending on the availability of parking slot. Improvement: For this kind of system, when a large parking area will be considered at that time some intelligent controllers should be designed for constant supply and distribution of power from grid to vehicle in a continuous manner.Keywords: Car Park Infrastructure, Fuzzy Logic Controller, Inductive Charging, LabVIEW, Vehicle

Simultaneous determination of ascorbic and uric acids and dopamine in human serum samples using three-way calibration with data from square wave voltammetry

We present for the first time a novel analytical method based on a model of three-way calibration using second-order data generated from the combination of records of forward (oxidation) and reverse (reduction) currents using a glassy carbon electrode modified with a dispersion of electrochemically reduced graphene oxide (GCE/RGO) as the working electrode, which can be obtained from a square wave voltammetry single experiment. This methodology was used for the simultaneous determination of ascorbic (AA) and uric (UA) acids, and dopamine (DO) in the presence de glucose (interfering species) in lyophilized human serum samples.The serum samples have analyte different concentration levels (normal and pathological levels). The forward and reverse currents were pre-processed using AsLS and COW, to generate the second order data and finally the data were modeled with the U-PLS algorithm. Recovery studies were made in order to validate the proposed method. Recovery percentages between 92.4 and 120% were obtained.The present method has the advantage to generate second order data through a simple voltammetric experiment. Among the advantages of the proposed method can be mentioned speed, easy data acquisition and the possibility of using modified electrodes with nano-structures.

Development of proton CT imaging system using plastic scintillator and CCD camera

A proton computed tomography (pCT) imaging system was constructed for evaluation of the error of an x-ray CT (xCT)-to-WEL (water-equivalent length) conversion in treatment planning for proton therapy. In this system, the scintillation light integrated along the beam direction is obtained by photography using the CCD camera, which enables fast and easy data acquisition. The light intensity is converted to the range of the proton beam using a light-to-range conversion table made beforehand, and a pCT image is reconstructed. An experiment for demonstration of the pCT system was performed using a 70 MeV proton beam provided by the AVF930 cyclotron at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences. Three-dimensional pCT images were reconstructed from the experimental data. A thin structure of approximately 1 mm was clearly observed, with spatial resolution of pCT images at the same level as that of xCT images. The pCT images of various substances were reconstructed to evaluate the pixel value of pCT images. The image quality was investigated with regard to deterioration including multiple Coulomb scattering.