RESUMO
The application of ubiquitous computing has increased in recent years, especially due to the development of technologies such as mobile computing, more accurate sensors, and specific protocols for the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the trends in this area of research is the use of context awareness. In agriculture, the context involves the environment, for example, the conditions found inside a greenhouse. Recently, a series of studies have proposed the use of sensors to monitor production and/or the use of cameras to obtain information about cultivation, providing data, reminders, and alerts to farmers. This article proposes a computational model for indoor agriculture called IndoorPlant. The model uses the analysis of context histories to provide intelligent generic services, such as predicting productivity, indicating problems that cultivation may suffer, and giving suggestions for improvements in greenhouse parameters. IndoorPlant was tested in three scenarios of the daily life of farmers with hydroponic production data that were obtained during seven months of cultivation of radicchio, lettuce, and arugula. Finally, the article presents the results obtained through intelligent services that use context histories. The scenarios used services to recommend improvements in cultivation, profiles and, finally, prediction of the cultivation time of radicchio, lettuce, and arugula using the partial least squares (PLS) regression technique. The prediction results were relevant since the following values were obtained: 0.96 (R2, coefficient of determination), 1.06 (RMSEC, square root of the mean square error of calibration), and 1.94 (RMSECV, square root of the mean square error of cross validation) for radicchio; 0.95 (R2), 1.37 (RMSEC), and 3.31 (RMSECV) for lettuce; 0.93 (R2), 1.10 (RMSEC), and 1.89 (RMSECV) for arugula. Eight farmers with different functions on the farm filled out a survey based on the technology acceptance model (TAM). The results showed 92% acceptance regarding utility and 98% acceptance for ease of use.
RESUMO
Microplastics such as pellets have been reported for many years on sandy beaches around the globe. Nevertheless, high variability is observed in their estimates and distribution patterns across the beach environment are still to be unravelled. Here, we investigate the small-scale temporal and spatial variability in the abundance of pellets in the intertidal zone of a sandy beach and evaluate factors that can increase the variability in data sets. The abundance of pellets was estimated during twelve consecutive tidal cycles, identifying the position of the high tide between cycles and sampling drift-lines across the intertidal zone. We demonstrate that beach dynamic processes such as the overlap of strandlines and artefacts of the methods can increase the small-scale variability. The results obtained are discussed in terms of the methodological considerations needed to understand the distribution of pellets in the beach environment, with special implications for studies focused on patterns of input.