The programming of complex tasks with robot manipulators faces the challenges complying to constraints and needing account for several, sometimes conflicting performance objectives. Optimal control problems (OCP) are able explicitly these by solving constrained optimization find optimal trajectories that realize such tasks. wide adoption OCPs, however, is restricted high engineering cost comput...

Soil constitutes the central environmental compartment that, primarily due to anthropogenic activities, is recipient of several contaminants. Among these are organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), which major concern, even though they were banned decades ago their persistence and health effects can elicit. In this review, an overview monitoring studies regarding OCPs in soils published over last 30 ...

In order to assess pollutant transfer in Camargue ponds from bordering agrosystems, a biomonitoring assay was conducted in irrigation and drainage channels of rice fields in the Rhone Delta (France). A filter-feeding bivalve, the Asian clam, Corbicula fluminea, was used as bioindicator and caged in upstream and downstream channels of an area of conventional rice fields. After 6 weeks incubation...

Carotenoids are widely distributed natural pigments that are excellent antioxidants acting in photoprotection. They are typically solubilized in membranes or attached to proteins. In cyanobacteria, the photoactive soluble Orange Carotenoid Protein (OCP) is involved in photoprotective mechanisms as a highly active singlet oxygen and excitation energy quencher. Here we describe a method for produ...

The Variation Evolving Method (VEM), which seeks the optimal solutions with the variation evolution principle, is further developed to be more flexible in solving the Optimal Control Problems (OCPs) with terminal constraint. With the first-order stable dynamics to eliminate the infeasibilities, the Modified Evolution Partial Differential Equation (MEPDE) that is valid in the infeasible solution...

Activated carbon fiber (ACF) as extraction fiber for solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and its application for the analysis of banned organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were investigated. Firstly, ACF was activated by different concentration of zinc chloride, which indicated that ACF activated by 60% zinc chloride had a reasonable specific surface area, pore volume and pore distribution. Secondl...

We propose a Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework to generate feedback controls for time-varying nonlinear systems with input constraints. We provide for this framework a set of conditions on the design parameters that are sufficient to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop response. This sufficient condition for stability allows MPC practitioners to verify a priori that a given set of...

We have developed a new method for single-drop microextraction (SDME) for the preconcentration of organochlorine pesticides (OCP) from complex matrices. It is based on the use of a silicone ring at the tip of the syringe. A 5 μL drop of n-hexane is applied to an aqueous extract containing the OCP and found to be adequate to preconcentrate the OCPs prior to analysis by GC in combination with tan...

With the prohibition of conventional organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), extensive use and continuous release current-use (CUPs), such as organic amine (OAPs) organophosphate (OPPs), in agriculture mariculture activities have raised global attention. In this study, occurrence distribution 36 from above 3 categories were investigated seawater sediment Beibu Gulf, a typical subtropical agricultural...