The motivation for this review paper came from the developing countries where the economy is mostly dependent on agriculture and climate conditions. Based on current conditions and historical records, profitability in production farming depends on making a right and timely operational decision. Precision farming is a systematic program designed to maximize the productivity of agriculture by carefully tailoring the soil and crop management to meet the specific requirements in each field while preserving environmental quality. This review paper highlights the development of an automated irrigation system with portable wireless sensor networks and decision support methods to remotely measure the environmental parameters in an agriculture field. Radio satellite, mobile phones, sensors, internet-based communication, and microcontroller capture the ecological parameters such as soil moisture, temperature, humidity, and light intensity. The knowledge gained from the sensors is transferred directly to the cloud server by using IoT technology. Users from anywhere in the world can display them through an internet-enabled device. Development of sensor-based application in modern agriculture makes it cost-effective and potentially productive and increases the efficiency through precision agriculture farming. Different limitations have been reported in the previously reviewed publications like the shortage of power in the field that can be solved by using a solar panel that recharges the battery at the same time using electricity. Bluetooth application in the agriculture sector is mainly improved by design system optimization. Problems related to transmission and radio range frequency can be solved by using a power class upgraded antenna.

Magnetic bearings have no mechanical contact between the rotor and stator, and a rotary pump with magnetic bearings therefore has no mechanical wear and thrombosis. The magnetic bearings available, however, contain electromagnets, are complicated to control and have high energy consumption. Therefore, it is difficult to apply an electromagnetic bearing to a rotary pump without disturbing its simplicity, reliability and ability to be implanted. The authors have developed a levitated impeller pump using only permanent magnets. The rotor is supported by permanent radial magnetic forces. The impeller is fixed on one side of the rotor; on the other side the rotor magnets are mounted. Opposite these rotor magents, a driving magnet is fastened to the motor axis. Thereafter, the motor drives the rotor via magnetic coupling. In laboratory tests with saline, where the rotor is still or rotates at under 4,000 rpm, the rotor magnets have one point in contact axially with a spacer between the rotor magnets and the driving magnets. The contacting point is located in the center of the rotor. As the rotating speed increases gradually to more than 4000 rpm, the rotor will disaffiliate from the stator axially, and become fully levitated. Since the axial levitation is produced by hydraulic force and the rotor magnets have a giro-effect, the rotor rotates very stably during levitation. As a left ventricular assist device, the pump works in a rotating speed range of 5,000-8,000 rpm, and the levitation of the impeller is assured by use of the pump. The permanent maglev impeller pump retains the advantages of the rotary pump but overcomes the disadvantages of the leviated pump with electromagnetic-bearing, and has met with most requirements of artificial heart blood pumps, thus promising to have more applications than previously.

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Background: Tactile perception is an essential function of skin. As this research involves many fields, such as skin friction, psychology, and neuroscience, the achievement tactile perception is scattered in various fields with different research methods.Therefore, it is necessary to study the whole tactile loop in a multimodal way, synchronizing all tactile information. Materials and methods:To measure information from touch to haptics, we developed a specially designed measuring platform connecting to an electroencephalogram (EEG) recording system. Sandpapers with different roughness were used as samples.First, the surface properties were measured in tribological experiments. Second, psychophysical experiments were conducted to assess the volunteers' cognition of samples' roughness. Third, the mechanical parameters and EEG were measured at the same time during fingertip sliding on samples. Then, the data of all four tactile elements were processed and analyzed separately. The characteristic features were extracted from those data in the time-frequency domain. Furthermore, the correlation coefficient was calculated in the pairwise comparison of each element to evaluate the feasibility of the multimodal method in the study of tactile perception. Results:The 600-mesh sandpaper has the largest Ra, Rz, Rsm, and particle size. The normal load, friction force, spectral centroid, and αand β-wave energy ratios of EEG at chosen electrodes have significant differences and correlations between 3000-and 600-mesh sandpaper in general. Conclusion:This multimodal method could be used in the study of tactile perception, which is a comprehensive way to observe the whole tactile loop from multiple perspectives.

To provide better anatomical fit and physiologic adaptation, three aortic valvo-pumps with different dimensions were developed. Each pump has a rotor with an impeller and drive magnets and a stator consisting of a motor coil with iron core and an outflow guide vane. The devices had outer diameters of 21 mm, 23 mm, and 25 mm, respectively, and weighted 27 g, 31 g, and 40 g, respectively. Laboratory testing demonstrated that the rotating speed for maintaining a diastolic pressure of 80 mm Hg at zero flow rate should be 17500 rpm, 15000 rpm, and 12500 rpm, respectively; the largest flow at these same speeds will be 5 l/min, 7 l/min, and 10 l/min, respectively, with approximately 50 mm Hg pressure head increase. Therefore, these three pumps may meet the hemodynamic requirements of patients with body weights of 40-60 kg, 60-80 kg, and 80-100 kg. The first in vivo trial exhibited that the 25 mm valvo-pump can be sewn onto the aortic valve annulus of a 80 kg body weight pig without harm to adjacent organ functions. The devices occupy no additional anatomic space and deliver the blood directly from ventricle to the aorta, thus producing less physiologic disturbance to the natural circulation. Neither connecting conduits nor bypass circuits are necessary, thus eliminating the most dangerous sites of thrombosis in traditional left ventricular assist devices.