Smart Farming and Surveillance using a Multipurpose Robot and Machine Learning

Agriculture is the procedure of producing food, feed, fiber, and many other favored merchandise by cultivating favorable vegetation and raising farm animals. The exercise of agriculture is also referred to as farming. However, there are a few challenges in raising agricultural productiveness in line with the unit of land, reducing rural poverty through a socially inclusive strategy that contains each agriculture in addition to non-farm employment, ensuring that agricultural boom responds to food security wishes. Nowadays, the advancement in ingenious farming techniques is progressively enhancing the crop yield making it greater worthwhile and reduce irrigation wastages. The proposed system is to layout and increases an autonomous vehicle that can carry out various agricultural activities inclusive of digging, sowing seeds, pumping insecticides, cutting undesirable grass within the discipline, etc. The farming land is autonomously irrigated with sufficient water with the help of moisture sensors within the land. The autonomous robot's general operation and the irrigation gadget are monitored and maintained using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. The overall operation and records are measured via the sensors are stored in the cloud for device gaining knowledge of (ML) algorithm and future references. Thereby, it increases the machine's overall performance accuracy and reduces the human power and saves the time required to cultivate the farmland

Updated Fuel Tank Puncture Survey: 1995-2020

The Federal Railroad Administration’s Office of Research, Development and Technology has been conducting research into passenger fuel tank crashworthiness. The occurrence of a fuel tank puncture during passenger rail collisions and derailments increases the potential of serious injury and fatality for crew and passengers due to the possibility of fire. The purpose of the FRA research is to help support regulatory and standard development with technical data. In the last decade, the research has focused on understanding how fuel tanks are punctured during an impact and how various tank designs respond to common types of loading in collisions, derailments and general operation. Throughout the research, surveys have been conducted to determine the most likely scenarios that are causing fuel tank punctures. A previous FRA survey found that fuel tank punctures occur under two types of loading conditions: a blunt impact or a raking impact. A limited number of accident/incidents were evaluated in this survey. These incidents showed that fuel tanks are punctured on any side that is not protected or shielded. The purpose of this paper is to report on a recently conducted fuel tank puncture survey updated to include the last decade. This paper identifies and describes accidents and incidents that led to breached fuel tanks in freight and passenger trains traveling on the general railroad system in the U.S. between 2008 and 2020. The results include data from the FRA’s Railroad Accident/Incident Reporting System (RAIRS), queried from 1995 to 2020. This data include the number of recorded accidents/incidents and other trends like fuel spillage, operating authority and cause of accident/incident. RAIRS data showed accidents/incidents with fuel tank puncture ranging from 10 to 55 accidents/incidents per year. Additionally, more detailed results are shared from field investigations recently conducted by the FRA or Volpe Center. These more detailed investigations provide additional insight into the types of loading that may lead to a fuel tank puncture. This survey supplements the RAIRS data with more detailed information from field investigations. The paper finally discusses the conditions that lead to fire and the associated hazards.

A study of universal zero-knowledge proof circuit-based virtual machines that validate general operations & reduce transaction validation

Recently, blockchain technology accumulates and stores all transactions. Therefore, in order to verify the contents of all transactions, the data itself is compressed, but the scalability is limited. In addition, since a separate verification algorithm is used for each type of transaction, the verification burden increases as the size of the transaction increases. Existing blockchain cannot participate in the network because it does not become a block sink by using a server with a low specification. Due to this problem, as the time passes, the data size of the blockchain network becomes larger and it becomes impossible to participate in the network except for users with abundant resources. Therefore, in this paper, we studied the zero knowledge proof algorithm for general operation verification. In this system, the design of zero-knowledge circuit generator capable of general operation verification and optimization of verifier and prover were also conducted. Also, we developed an algorithm for optimizing key generation. Based on all of these, the zero-knowledge proof algorithm was applied to and tested on the virtual machine so that it can be used universally on all blockchains.

Economic Freedom and Inequality in the Art Market: The Case of the Commercial Gallery

This article aims to consider the contemporary art market vis-à-vis the concept of economic freedom. Drawn from a larger study, this paper offers a glimpse of the political function of the art market, which is essentially an economic field. What I demonstrate is an inevitable clash between a free market and between political constructions that effect levels of freedom—concentrating on the parameter of inequality. The article focuses on the case of commercial art galleries, and analyzes their operation under neoliberal conditions, which represent the implementation of the idea of freedom in the economic field. Subsequently, I demonstrate the how high levels of concentration in the art market erode the levels of the equality of the players in the field. Ultimately, I argue that this case offers an example of the more general operation of the art market, which follows neoliberal principles, and thereby undermines the concept of economic freedom that is intrinsic to them.

Autopolicy: Automated Traffic Policing for Improved IoT Network Security

A 2.3Tbps DDoS attack was recently mitigated by Amazon, which is a new record after the 2018 GitHub attack, or the famous 2016 Dyn DNS attack launched from hundreds of thousands of hijacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices. These attacks may disrupt the lives of billions of people worldwide, as we increasingly rely on the Internet. In this paper, we tackle the problem that hijacked IoT devices are often the origin of these attacks. With the goal of protecting the Internet and local networks, we propose Autopolicy: a system that automatically limits the IP traffic bandwidth—and other network resources—available to IoT devices in a particular network. We make use of the fact that devices, such as sensors, cameras, and smart home appliances, rarely need their high-speed network interfaces for normal operation. We present a simple yet flexible architecture for Autopolicy, specifying its functional blocks, message sequences, and general operation in a Software Defined Network. We present the experimental validation results, and release a prototype open source implementation.

Unholy Alliances and their Threat: The Convergence of Terrorism, Organized Crime and Corruption

Since the tragedy of September 11, 2001 (9/11) there have been a growing awareness and recognition of the expanding threat presented by the transmutation and convergence of international organized crime and terrorist groups. There is a semantic debate on whether these organizations are “converging” or “transforming.” Regardless, this worrisome development is complicated and progressively difficult to combat and calls for law enforcement, intelligence and military interventions. While the United States and other countries have been dealing with the post-9/11 world of persistent problems like Iraq, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (ISIS), Syria, and more, the links between organized crime and terrorism could prolong these challenges and generate further disruptions and menace to global security and development. There are strong operational needs and requirements that bring organized crime and terrorists together for collaboration and even seamless transitions within the same general operation. However, there are substantial hurdles that make a total teamwork between the two groups not so easily achievable. For example, organized crime normally avoids the publicity and the indiscriminate killings often used by terrorists. However, it is clear that the merging of international organized crime and terrorist groups is growing and presents unique challenges and opportunities. This paper examines this ongoing transmutation, convergence and cooperation between transnational organized crime and terrorism, and offers examples and recommendations on how to prevent it and defeat it.

Cost Effective Energy-Saving System in Parking Spots

Vehicles are becoming an essential product in everyone’s life. Keeping a vehicle in a safe place will improve the life of its engine and other electrical systems. Hence, parking place occupies a major portion while constructing a house, apartment and shopping malls. The lighting system in such places are utilizing more energy and it leads to unnecessary expense on electricity bills. The proposed microcontroller based energy saving system is developed to minimize the utilization of light energy in parking spaces in an efficient manner. The results of the proposed system is compared with the general operation for identifying its efficiency. The proposed method saves the energy up to 46.35% than the existing lighting system.

Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals: Physics and Applications

Electrooptic modes with fast response and high contrast ratio are highly desirable in modern photonics and displays. Ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) are especially promising for fulfilling these demands by employing photoalignment technology in FLC cells. Three electrooptic modes including surface stabilized FLC (SSFLC), deformed helix ferroelectric (DHF) mode, and electrically suppressed helix (ESH) mode are reviewed with the corresponding electrooptic effects like bi- and multi-stable switching, continuous modulation of grayscale or phase, and high contrast switching. The general operation principles FLC electrooptic modes are described, and then the characteristics of each modes for potential applications are summarized. With the advantages of controllable anchoring energy, the photoalignment provides FLC samples with uniform alignment and high contrast ratio. The fast FLCs with a high resolution and high contrast can be used in the next generation display including field sequential color FLC microdisplays, as well as switchable 2D/3D televisions.

The Paradox of Enlightened Care

This chapter covers Saint Elizabeths during the tenure of its first superintendent, Charles H. Nichols (1855–1877), including the impact of the Civil War on the composition of the patient population, the general operation of the hospital, and the overall treatment of African American patients. Although blacks were among the soldiers, sailors, and federal prisoners admitted to the hospital in its early years, the majority of African American patients were indigent civilian residents of the District. The Civil War led to emancipation in the District and the influx of contrabands—black refugees and fugitive slaves—into the city, making it difficult for hospital officials to employ a strict residency requirement for admission. The chapter also explores the ways in which racial discrimination characterized the hospital’s therapeutic regime. It further reveals how African American patients and their families sought to shape their own experiences in the hospital.