Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The increasing resistance of microorganisms to conventional chemicals and drugs is a serious and evident worldwide problem that has prompted research into the identification of new biocides with broad activity. Plants and their derivatives, such as essential oils, are often used in folk medicine. In nature, essential oils play an important role in the protection of plants. Essential oils contain a wide variety of secondary metabolites that are capable of inhibiting or slowing the growth of bacteria, yeasts and moulds. Essential oils and their components have activity against a variety of targets, particularly the membrane and cytoplasm, and in some cases, they completely change the morphology of the cells. This brief review describes the activity of essential oils against pathogenic bacteria.

/pdf/effect-of-essential-oils-on-pathogenic-bacteria-16hlitkebz.pdf

Effect of Essential Oils on Pathogenic Bacteria

International study of the prevalence and outcomes of infection in intensive care units

Formation control analysis and design problems for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations are investigated. To achieve predefined time-varying formations, formation protocols are presented for UAV swarm systems first, where the velocities of UAVs can be different when achieving formations. Then, consensus-based approaches are applied to deal with the time-varying formation control problems for UAV swarm systems. Necessary and sufficient conditions for UAV swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations are proposed. An explicit expression of the time-varying formation center function is derived. In addition, a procedure to design the protocol for UAV swarm systems to achieve time-varying formations is given. Finally, a quadrotor formation platform, which consists of five quadrotors is introduced. Theoretical results obtained in this brief are validated on the quardrotor formation platform, and outdoor experimental results are presented.

Time-Varying Formation Control for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Theories and Applications

Recently, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have attracted a lot of attention, since they represent a new potential market. Along with the maturity of the technology and relevant regulations, a worldwide deployment of these UAVs is expected. Thanks to the high mobility of drones, they can be used to provide a lot of applications, such as service delivery, pollution mitigation, farming, and in the rescue operations. Due to its ubiquitous usability, the UAV will play an important role in the Internet of Things (IoT) vision, and it may become the main key enabler of this vision. While these UAVs would be deployed for specific objectives (e.g., service delivery), they can be, at the same time, used to offer new IoT value-added services when they are equipped with suitable and remotely controllable machine type communications (MTCs) devices (i.e., sensors, cameras, and actuators). However, deploying UAVs for the envisioned purposes cannot be done before overcoming the relevant challenging issues. These challenges comprise not only technical issues, such as physical collision, but also regulation issues as this nascent technology could be associated with problems like breaking the privacy of people or even use it for illegal operations like drug smuggling. Providing the communication to UAVs is another challenging issue facing the deployment of this technology. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on the UAVs and the related issues will be introduced. In addition, our envisioned UAV-based architecture for the delivery of UAV-based value-added IoT services from the sky will be introduced, and the relevant key challenges and requirements will be presented.

Low-Altitude Unmanned Aerial Vehicles-Based Internet of Things Services: Comprehensive Survey and Future Perspectives

In this paper we present behavior recognition algorithms using images captured by a small UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). Small UAVs provide a mobile platform capable of monitoring a large area, but each UAV has a limited field of view, resulting in very brief observations of targets of interest as UAVs fly over them. Standard behavior recognition algorithms are designed for CCTV networks, where cameras have a fixed view of the target area. To apply these algorithms to imagery from small UAVs, we first geo-locate targets based on their image coordinates and correspondences between geo-located landmarks and landmarks in each video frame. We then apply behavior recognition algorithms that are suited to very short observation periods. We test these algorithms in a simulation environment incorporating realistic target motion and validate the entire approach on imagery captured by a small UAV. These experiments illustrate that automatic behavior recognition has merit even during brief fly-overs, typical of a small UAV on surveillance patrol.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6375948/6393028/06393427.pdf

Monitoring for intrusion behaviors with a small UAV

In this paper, we formulate a virtual target-based path following guidance law aimed towards multi-vehicle path following problem. The guidance law is well suited to precisely follow circular paths while minting desired distance between two adjacent vehicles where path information is only available to the lead vehicle. We analytically show lateral and longitudnal stability and convergence on the path. This is also validated through simulation and experimental results.

Multi-vehicle Path Following using Modified Trajectory Shaping Guidance.

An open-source vehicle automation methodology, and platform for road vehicles (cars, and trucks) is presented. The platform hardware, and software, based on the Robot Operating System (ROS), are detailed. Two strategies are discussed for enabling the remote control of a vehicle (in this case, an electric 2013 Ford Focus). The first approach used digital filtering of Controller Area Network (CAN) messages. In the case of the test vehicle, this approach allowed for the control of acceleration from a tap-point on the CAN bus, and the OBD-II port. The second approach, based on the emulation of the analog output(s) of a vehicle's accelerator pedal, brake pedal, and steering torque sensors, is more generally applicable and, in the test vehicle, allowed for the full control vehicle acceleration, braking, and steering. To demonstrate the utility of the methodology, and platform for vehicle automation research, a very basic low-level velocity, and steering controllers are developed. Additionally a high level path following algorithm was developed. Finally, the system is validated experimentally.

Low Cost, Open-Source Platform to Enable Full-Sized Automated Vehicle Research

Burn induction methodologies are inconsistently described in rat models. A uniform burn wound model, which represents the clinical scenario, is necessary to perform reproducible burn research. The present protocol describes a simple and reproducible method to create ~20% total body surface area (TBSA) full-thickness burns in rats. Here, a 22.89 cm2 (5.4 cm diameter) copper rod heated at 97 °C in a water bath was applied to the rat skin surface to induce the burn injury. A copper rod with a high thermal conductivity was able to dissipate the heat deeper in the skin tissue to create a full-thickness burn. Histology analysis shows attenuated epidermis with coagulative damage to the full-thickness extent of the dermis and the subcutaneous tissue. Additionally, this model is representative of the clinical situations observed in hospitalized burn patients following burn injury such as immune dysregulation and bacterial infections. The model can recapitulate the systemic bacterial infection by both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. In conclusion, this paper presents an easy-to-learn and robust rat burn model that mimics the clinical situations, including immune dysregulation and bacterial infections, which is of considerable utility for the development of new topical antibiotic drugs for burn wound and infections.

Rat Burn Model to Study Full-Thickness Cutaneous Thermal Burn and Infection.

Consider a system with an aerial Attacker, n aerial Informants, and a non-cooperative ground Target, along with two landmarks, in a Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied environment. A common navigation solution alternative to GPS is the development of the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) with cooperative localization. Cooperative localization allows a system of agents to jointly estimate their states by exchanging measurement data. Exploiting the two landmarks, the Informants estimate their positions, along with those of the Attacker and Target. The Informants then exchange knowledge with the Attacker, enabling it to intercept the Target. The accuracy of the state estimates depends upon measurement uncertainty, as the timing and relative positions and attitudes between the agents and landmarks when the data are acquired affect the robustness of the system. Therefore, a method is introduced herein to determine the trajectories of the Informants that result in the greatest likelihood of Target interception 

Rajnikant Sharma

Papers

Monitoring for intrusion behaviors with a small UAV

Multi-vehicle Path Following using Modified Trajectory Shaping Guidance.

Low Cost, Open-Source Platform to Enable Full-Sized Automated Vehicle Research

Rat Burn Model to Study Full-Thickness Cutaneous Thermal Burn and Infection.

Optimal Informant Trajectories Applying Range-Based Guidance Law for Target Interception