When Tiny Goes Big

I believe that the Internet of Tiny Things (IoTT) will be the next big driver of the computing and semiconductor industry - imagine applications such as smart city, home sensors, wearables, implantables, single-use electronic tags for pharmaceuticals and produce, and more. Trillions of tiny devices may be needed every year to enable these applications, while meeting extreme requirements in terms of cost (sometimes only a few cents), power (often self-powered), and trust (often physically accessible and producing sensitive data). Our research over last few years has been focused on enabling an internet of these tiny things by addressing the unique cost, power, and trust challenges of these devices.

An Intelligent Shopping System based on UHF RFID

In the context of COVID-19, in order to solve the problems that customers need to spend more energy to find products in the supermarket, long checkout queue time, and cumbersome product management, optimize the shopping route of customers, accelerate the shopping process, and reduce the risk of infection; providers exceed Supplier’s sales of goods, and then timely and purposeful selection of goods, simplifying the supply chain process between supermarkets and suppliers. This article designs a multi-terminal interactive intelligent shopping system based on UHF RFID to construct The shopping cart terminal, mobile phone APP terminal, data management system terminal, and three-terminal interactive system with RFID technology as the core are developed. The design uses the UHF RFID system to identify the information in the electronic tags of the goods, and through the navigation function, helps customers locate the desired goods, and realizes the functions of identification, information display, navigation and positioning, and settlement.

Too big to study? The biologging approach to understanding the behavioural energetics of ocean giants

ABSTRACT Wild animals are under selective pressure to optimise energy budgets; therefore, quantifying energy expenditure, intake and allocation to specific activities is important if we are to understand how animals survive in their environment. One approach toward estimating energy budgets has involved measuring oxygen consumption rates under controlled conditions and constructing allometric relationships across species. However, studying ‘giant’ marine vertebrates (e.g. pelagic sharks, whales) in this way is logistically difficult or impossible. An alternative approach involves the use of increasingly sophisticated electronic tags that have allowed recordings of behaviour, internal states and the surrounding environment of marine animals. This Review outlines how we could study the energy expenditure and intake of free-living ocean giants using this ‘biologging’ technology. There are kinematic, physiological and theoretical approaches for estimating energy expenditure, each of which has merits and limitations. Importantly, tag-derived energy proxies can hardly be validated against oxygen consumption rates for giant species. The proxies are thus qualitative, rather than quantitative, estimates of energy expenditure, and have more limited utilities. Despite this limitation, these proxies allow us to study the energetics of ocean giants in their behavioural context, providing insight into how these animals optimise their energy budgets under natural conditions. We also outline how information on energy intake and foraging behaviour can be gained from tag data. These methods are becoming increasingly important owing to the natural and anthropogenic environmental changes faced by ocean giants that can alter their energy budgets, fitness and, ultimately, population sizes.

A case for restoring unity between biotelemetry and bio-logging to enhance animal tracking research

Monitoring animals with electronic tags is an increasingly important tool for fundamental and applied ecological research. Based on the size of the system under study, the ability to recapture the animal, and research medium (e.g., aerial, freshwater, saltwater, terrestrial), tags selected may either log data in memory (bio-logging), transmit it to a receiver or satellite (biotelemetry), or have a hybrid design. Over time, we perceive that user groups are diverging based on increasing use of technology specific terms, favouring either bio-logging or biotelemetry. It is crucial to ensure that a divide does not become entrenched in the community because it will likely hinder efforts to advance field and analytical methods and reduce accessibility of animal tracking with electronic tags to early-career and new researchers. We discuss the context for this emerging problem and the evidence that this is manifesting within the scientific community. Finally, we suggest how the animal tracking community may work to address this issue to maximize the benefits of information transfer and integration between users of the two technologies.

Airports’ Crisis Management Processes and Stakeholders Involved

Airports are exposed to various physical incidents that can be classified as aviation and non-aviation related incidents, including terrorist attacks, bombings, natural disasters (e.g. earthquake or tsunami and man-made disasters such as terrorist attacks) etc. (Kanyi, Kamau, & Mireri, 2016). In addition to this, cyber-attacks to airport operations are emerging especially with the increasing use of Information Systems (IS), such as electronic tags for baggage handling and tracking, remote check-in, smart boarding gates, faster and more reliable security screening technologies and biometric immigration controls etc. Any physical or cyber incident that causes loss of infrastructure or massive patient surge, such as natural disasters, terrorist acts, or chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive hazards could affect the airports’ services provision and could cause overwhelming pressure. During the crisis management, several stakeholders that have different needs and requirements, get involved in the process, trying to cooperate, respond and support recovery and impact mitigation. The aim of this paper is to present a holistic security agenda that defines the stakeholders involved in the respective processes followed during the crisis management cycle. This agenda is based both on normative literature, such as relevant standards, guidelines, and practices and on knowledge and feedback extrapolated from a case study conducted in the context of the SATIE project (H2020-GA832969). In meeting paper’s aim, initially the normative review of the phases of the crisis management cycle (preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation) in the context of airports as well as general practices applied, are presented. Moreover, the key airport stakeholders and operation centres involved in airports operations, as well as during the crisis management are analysed. By combining the information collected, a holistic cyber and physical crisis management cycle including the stakeholders and the relevant processes are proposed. The crisis management process is taken into consideration into the SATIE project, which aims to build a security toolkit in order to protect critical air transport infrastructures against combined cyber-physical threats. This toolkit will rely on a complete set of semantic rules that will improve the interoperability between existing systems and enhanced security solutions, in order to ensure more efficient threat prevention, threat and anomaly detection, incident response and impact mitigation, across infrastructures, populations and environment.

Dolphinfish Movements in the Eastern Pacific Ocean of Mexico Using Conventional and Electronic Tags

Background The dolphinfish, Coryphaena hippurus , is a fast-swimming, predatory fish exhibiting relatively fast growth and early maturation among marine teleosts. It is an important, potentially renewable resource throughout its global subtropical-to-tropical range. Understanding the ecology of this wide-ranging fish is critical to proper fisheries management, but studies have historically depended heavily upon aggregated catch data reported by fisheries. This study uses tagging data to explore finer scale dolphinfish movements in two subregions of the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) – the west coasts of Baja California Peninsula (WBC) and Oaxaca (OAX), Mexico. Results Adult dolphinfish (fork length 66 cm - 129 cm) were tagged with conventional (n = 132 tags) and electronic tags (n = 30 tags, miniPAT) between 2010 and 2014. Recapture rate of conventional tags was 4.5% with a maximum days of liberty of 141 days (mean = 56 d); twenty electronic tags reported but all did so prior to programmed release dates, with days at liberty ranging from 4 to 62 (mean = 24 d). Fish remained within the region they were tagged except for six fish tagged in WBC and one in OAX. Latitudinal (WBC) and longitudinal (OAX) extensions of observed fish movements (determined via a novel analytical approach) increased with days at liberty. Despite occasional deep dives (max 262 m), fish remained surface oriented with short excursions below the isothermal layer but larger OAX fish (fork length [103 cm, 120 cm]) inhabiting warmer waters (sea surface temperatures (SST) > ~26 °C) spent more time below the isothermal layer than smaller fish (fork length [90 cm,112 cm]) inhabiting colder WBC surface waters (SST > ~22 °C).Conclusions This study reveals movements of dolphinfish that infer regional differences in thermal habitat utilization and displacement over time. This inference evokes questions important to fisheries management regarding the three-dimensional extent of the dolphinfish’s realized thermal niche, its population structure, and the spatiotemporal connectivity of its habitats within the multinational EPO. With improved tag retention, longer deployments should capture increasing displacements along observed axes (N/S vs. E/W); the orientation of seasonal displacement axes suggest longer-distance movements would provide opportunities for reproductive mixing via trans-national migrations.

Challenges Associated With the Use of Radio Frequency Identification Tags and Vehicular Access Control Systems: A Case Study of Two Ghana Universities

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Ghana (UG) have embraced the use of electronic tags to grant users access to their campuses via electronic vehicle access-control gates. This introduction has not only granted or denied users entry into the university community, but has helped increase security, monitored movement of vehicles, kept records, reduced the rate of vehicle theft and unnecessary traffic jams. That notwithstanding, there are some challenges. This study focused on analysing the existing vehicular accesscontrol systems in both universities and the challenges faced with the use of the systems. The qualitative research method and the descriptive research design were employed in the study. In all, one hundred and forty (140) users of the access-control systems: seventy (70) from each university, were selected for interview using the convenience, snowball, and purposive sampling techniques. The findings of the study showed that out of the 140 respondents, fifty-four (54) respondents representing 39% indicated they have encountered one or more of these challenges: system authentication failure, delay in system operation, interrupted power supply, tag abuse and/or theft. These are coupled with challenges of the safety of the equipment adapted. In this regard, this paper resulted in a clear picture of the technology adopted by the two institutions, their pros and cons, as well as user friendliness and sustainability. This is followed by constructive recommendations regarding sustainable components for the vehicular access-control systems such as improvement in the bio data reading technology, more active chips, energy efficiency, and more effective but durable systems. This is expected to improve the institutional/employee security of such institutions as wells provide information on the RFID technology, its use and challenges to other institutions who are yet to embrace the system.

Dolphinfish Movements in the Eastern Pacific Ocean of Mexico Using Conventional and Electronic Tags

Background The dolphinfish, Coryphaena hippurus, is a fast-swimming, predatory fish exhibiting relatively fast growth and early maturation among marine teleosts. It is an important, potentially renewable resource throughout its global subtropical-to-tropical range. Understanding the ecology of this wide-ranging fish is critical to proper fisheries management, but studies have historically depended heavily upon aggregated catch data reported by fisheries. This study uses tagging data to explore finer scale dolphinfish movements in two subregions of the Eastern Pacific Ocean (EPO) – the west coasts of Baja California Peninsula (WBC) and Oaxaca (OAX), Mexico.Results Adult dolphinfish (fork length 66 cm - 129 cm) were tagged with conventional (n = 132 tags) and electronic tags (n = 30 tags, miniPAT) between 2010 and 2014. Recapture rate of conventional tags was 4.5% with a maximum days of liberty of 141 days (mean = 56 d); twenty electronic tags reported but all did so prior to programmed release dates, with days at liberty ranging from 4 to 62 (mean = 24 d). Fish remained within the region they were tagged except for six fish tagged in WBC and one in OAX. Latitudinal (WBC) and longitudinal (OAX) extensions of observed fish movements (determined via a novel analytical approach) increased with days at liberty. Despite occasional deep dives (max 262 m), fish remained surface oriented with short excursions below the isothermal layer but larger OAX fish (fork length [103 cm, 120 cm]) inhabiting warmer waters (sea surface temperatures (SST) > ~26 °C) spent more time below the isothermal layer than smaller fish (fork length [90 cm,112 cm]) inhabiting colder WBC surface waters (SST > ~22 °C).Conclusions This study reveals movements of dolphinfish that infer regional differences in thermal habitat utilization and displacement over time. This inference evokes questions important to fisheries management regarding the three-dimensional extent of the dolphinfish’s realized thermal niche, its population structure, and the spatiotemporal connectivity of its habitats within the multinational EPO. With improved tag retention, longer deployments should capture increasing displacements along observed axes (N/S vs. E/W); the orientation of seasonal displacement axes suggest longer-distance movements would provide opportunities for reproductive mixing via trans-national migrations.